# IDENTITY and PURPOSE

You extract surprising, insightful, and interesting information from text content. You are interested in insights related to the purpose and meaning of life, human flourishing, the role of technology in the future of humanity, artificial intelligence and its affect on humans, memes, learning, reading, books, continuous improvement, and similar topics. Insights should represent deeper conclusions or synthesized principles drawn from the text, relevant to these topics of interest. They may combine multiple points from the 'Ideas' list or the raw content and should offer a higher level of understanding than individual 'Ideas'.

Take a step back and think step-by-step about how to achieve the best possible results by following the steps below.

# STEPS

- Extract a summary of the content in 25 words, including who is presenting and the content being discussed into a section called "Summary".
- Extract *at least 20* of the most practical and useful personal habits of the speakers, or mentioned by the speakers, in the content into a section called "Habits". Examples include but aren't limited to: sleep schedule, reading habits, regular routines for well-being or productivity. If fewer than 20 distinct habits are found, extract all available qualifying habits.
- Extract *at least 20* of the most surprising, insightful, and/or interesting recommendations that can be collected from the content into a section called "Recommendations". If fewer than 20 distinct recommendations are found, extract all available qualifying recommendations.
- Extract *at least 25* of the most surprising, insightful, and/or interesting ideas from the input in a section called "Ideas". If the content contains more than 25 such ideas, aim to capture up to 50 of the best ones. If fewer than 25 distinct ideas are found, extract all available qualifying ideas.
- Extract *at least 10* of the best insights from the input and from a combination of the raw input and the IDEAS above into a section called "Insights". These insights should be fewer, more refined, more insightful, and more abstracted versions of the best ideas in the content, often requiring synthesis of multiple points. If fewer than 10 distinct insights are found, extract all available qualifying insights.
- Extract *at least 20* of the most surprising, insightful, and/or interesting statements presented as facts about the greater world that were mentioned in the content into a section called "Facts". If fewer than 20 distinct facts are found, extract all available qualifying facts.
- Extract *at least 20* of the most surprising, insightful, and/or interesting quotes from the input into a section called "Quotes". Use the exact quote text from the input. If fewer than 20 distinct quotes are found, extract all available qualifying quotes.
- Extract all mentions of writing, art, tools, projects, and other sources of inspiration mentioned by the speakers into a section called "References". This should include mentions of writing, art, tools, projects, and other sources of inspiration _presented as significant or influential_ by the speakers.

# OUTPUT INSTRUCTIONS

- Output as Markdown format, each section title is a heading 2 , **do not wrap in code block**.
- Write the "Habits" bullets as less than 25 words.
- Write the "Recommendations" bullets as less than 25 words.
- Write the "Ideas" bullets as less than 25 words.
- Write the "Insights" bullets as less than 25 words.
- Write the "Facts" bullets as less than 25 words.
- Do not give warnings or notes; only output the requested sections.
- You use bulleted lists for output, not numbered lists.
- Do not repeat ideas, quotes, facts, or resources.
- Strive for variety in the opening words of items within a list to enhance readability, where it can be done naturally.
- If a piece of information fits multiple categories, place it in the most specific or primary one based on this priority:
    2. Habits
    3. Recommendations
    4. Ideas
    5. Insights
    6. Facts
    7. Quotes
    8. References
- Rephrase if necessary for the chosen category (except for Quotes).
- If, after applying all rules and priorities, a section contains no items, omit that section entirely from the output.
- Ensure you follow ALL these instructions when creating your output.

# TEXT

## Intro

So, how do you manage your money so well to the point where you can buy a phone like this without worrying and draining your bank account? Well, welcome to my way of personal finance or financial literacy.

True story, I walked into an Apple store a couple months ago and I was kind of in need of a new phone. I did some research on the iPhone 16 Pro and I thought to myself, "I'll buy it." Next thing you know, I walked out of the store with a brand new iPhone 16 Pro. And I was able to do that guilt-free, not because of the amount of money I'm earning from YouTube. Well, that is a big part of it. The main reason why I was able to purchase something big like that is because I knew very well that I was able to purchase that without really tanking my savings or whatever.

And that's what personal finance brings you. Think of managing your money like scheduling your life. It might seem limiting at first, but then you realize that it's actually making you a lot more free. You'll be able to purchase anything that you want without feeling much guilt. Anyway, let's not waste any more time. Let's get into how I manage my money like a pro, even though I don't know if I'm a pro or not.

All right, so before we begin this video, we're going to be separating the video into certain sections or certain chapters because I know a lot of you might already know some information. So, you can just skip ahead and choose different chapters if you want to. Yeah, you get what I mean. There will be timestamps in the description, or you can just press those chapters in the video feed if you have YouTube. So, let's get straight into it.

## Tracking Your Money

All right, so the first step to financial literacy is to know where you're going to be tracking your money. There are two ways to pretty much track your money: an **Excel sheet** and a **money app tracker**. There are pros and cons to both.

### Money apps

First, let's talk about **money apps**. Money apps are popular in the sense that they are quite streamlined because they're quite literally designed for managing your money. What's cool about these apps is that these designers or app developers would design apps specifically to manage money, so it's very easy to understand right from the start. And apps nowadays have such a really nice UI, such an intuitive design, that it's pretty easy to learn money tracking from there. Now, the problem with money app trackers is that they are kind of reliant on the developer or the app itself. So, if your data goes lost or if something goes wrong with the developer or the application itself, you're done for. In terms of ownership of your data, it's really hard to say that you've owned the data because you're kind of in the hands of the app developer. So there's that.

### Spreadsheets

On the other side, you have **spreadsheets**, which are probably more popular among the general population for managing money. The good thing about a spreadsheet compared to a money tracker is that you are kind of in full control and ownership of your file because the spreadsheet is a specific file format. It's not tied to a specific app. So, in case, let's say, Microsoft Excel stops working, you can just load that spreadsheet into another software like, let's say, Google Sheets. Now, the problem with having a spreadsheet is the fact that it's kind of hard to set up at first. You might need to buy a template or you might need to just build it from scratch. And the other problem is that you will have to have access to a computer if you want to log in any sort of expense. So, for example, if I'm going outside with my friend and I want to track my expenses, I have to wait until I get home or I have to put it on a notepad and then transfer it to my spreadsheet.

Personally, I use a **money app tracker** simply because it has the feature of exporting my data into an Excel sheet. If you do plan on choosing a money app tracker, then I would highly recommend a tracker that's able to export into a spreadsheet.

## Listing Your Accounts

All right, so now that you've chosen your way of tracking your money, it's time for us to list all of your accounts. I'm sure you guys know what accounts are, but basically, this is how I separate my accounts. I separate them into three categories:

1. **Cash**: This is pretty much the physical money that I have on me. For example, in my current wallet, I have around 2,000 pesos in bills.
1. **Accounts Current**: This is practically your bank account, but in a sense that whenever you pay with your card or whenever you pay with a certain online payment, it will get the money directly from this account. So, for example, let's say my bank is under Maya, which is a specific bank here in the Philippines. It has a current and a savings account, which I will go into later, but every time I make a purchase, it will always deduct from my current account. So, think of it like your on-hand online cash.
1. **Account Savings**: This is like I mentioned, kind of like your savings account. So, whenever you do make a purchase online with a card or whatever, it will not touch your savings account. Think of it like a sort of reserve stash for your cash or something. And the good thing about banks is that when you deposit a certain amount of money, you will get what you call **interest**. Interest is essentially the bank paying you a percentage of your money owned in the bank, thanking you for putting money into their bank, something like that. I won't be talking about which banks are better or which interests are better, but a good rule of thumb is that the higher the interest, the better.

So, now that I've given you the categories, I would recommend listing all the accounts that you have. If I'm going to open my money app tracker, currently, I have seven main accounts: I have **cash**, I have **Maya savings** and **Maya current**, I have **BDO Current**, I have **G-Cash wallet**, **G-Cash savings**, and I have **PayPal**, which is my personal account. So, that was a lot of accounts, but most of them can be categorized under the three categories that I mentioned, which is cash, savings, and current. So, make sure to list all of your accounts into your money app tracker or your spreadsheet, and then list how much you have in them. And then we can move on to listing our monthly expenses.

## Identifying and Cutting Down Monthly Expenses

All right, so now that you've pretty much listed all of your accounts and pretty much your liquid net worth, now it's time to identify our **monthly expenses**. Monthly expenses would be stuff like food, utilities, subscriptions, apps, etc. These are the things that you're pretty much spending every month in order to keep you running. So, for example, rent, food, groceries, whatever, stuff like that.

Make sure to come up with a monthly figure of how much you practically spend per day. So, pretty much add all the things that you can think of that you probably spend monthly. For example, if your rent is, let's say, 10,000 pesos per month, make sure to write that and tally them all down and add them up. A good rule of thumb for people who don't know exactly how much they spend on a specific item per month is to imagine how much you'd be bringing every time you would pay for a specific day. So, for example, let's talk about food. It's kind of hard for me to quantify how much I spend monthly on food because sometimes I just don't go out at all, and sometimes I like treating my friends to food. So, if I were to imagine myself, how much would I bring going outside to accommodate pretty much my spending habits and for my friends? Maybe I would bring around 1,000 pesos.

Once you've put all of your monthly expenses, it's time to **cut down**. And this is the fun part of money budgeting. Take a look at your expenses and try to think of what you can cut down and what you exactly don't really need. So, just like my previous example with the food situation, I think 1,000 is way too much for a daily expense on food. I think I can cut that down by half. I'll still be saving a lot of money if I'm setting 500 per day for food. That's quite a lot for food. So, make sure to cut down on a lot of expenses that you have.

Some people might have certain applications that they don't use. For example, I stopped paying for my CapCut subscription because I don't really edit on that anymore. I also stopped paying for this flashcard service because I also use Anki, which is free. So, I don't really need to pay for a flashcard service. Stuff like that. You can even think of cutting down your rent as well. So, maybe you can find a cheaper place or maybe you can find a place that does not have a very high rent. I just said the exact same thing. What the am I saying?

## Setting Your Budget

So, once you cut down the monthly expenses, it's time to set our **budget**. Now, there are two ways you can set your budget: **percentage-based** and **set amount-based**. And of course, there are pros and cons to both types of budgets.

The good thing about a **percentage-based budget** is that regardless of income, you can apply that budget to any income level. The problem is that it kind of incentivizes you to spend more when you're earning more, which is kind of something I don't think is very cool. I think we all have a base level of spending that we can do every month just to survive, right? We don't really need to increase our way of living if we earn more, unless you want to. And then if you want to, you can do the percentage-based budget.

And on the other hand, we have a **set money budget**. So, basically, you're going to be limiting yourself to a specific amount of money per month rather than a percentage based on your income. Just think of it like an allowance. So, for example, for me personally, I have a set budget of 15,000 pesos per month. So, regardless of food, transportation, anything, I have to manage 15,000 per month. And everything else goes straight to my savings, which we can talk about later. If you really want to be strict and if you really want to ramp up your savings and your investments, I would highly recommend going for the set amount of budget. And you can set this amount based on your monthly expenses. Let's say you have to spend around 12,000 pesos per month. And to add leeway, let's add 2,000 pesos. So, from that figure, your monthly budget is around 14,000 pesos. Everything else will be deposited to your savings.

Now, in terms of the percentage rule, a lot of people follow the **75-15-10 rule**. **75%** of your income will be for your **expenses**. **15%** of your income will be for your **emergency fund**. So, we'll be talking about that later. And finally, **10%** is reserved for your **investments**, which we'll be talking about that. But yeah, it really depends on the person. If you really want to be strict with your money, I would highly recommend having a set allowance for yourself. But if you want to be more flexible, then you could go with the percentage-based budget. Personally, I have a mix of both because I do have a lot of business expenses that I make for this channel. I always buy new gear for myself and the employees. So, it really depends on your situation if you want to go for the percentage budget. It's more flexible, but then again, it's also encouraging more expenses as you ramp up your income. But if you receive an allowance, then of course you can follow the set money budget.

## Savings and Investment

All right, so now that you've set the budget for your month, what do you do with the rest of the money? Well, simply put, you deposit them. But there are three places that I want you to deposit your money, or three rather. So personally, I deposit my money into three locations:

1. **Main savings**: This is practically where I just pretty much dump my money that I won't be touching. But in a case where I am running out of funds and I do need to buy a specific item for a certain project. So, in a sense, it's my savings that I'm able to withdraw my cash from.
1. **Emergency rainy day fund**: Basically, this account is an account that I don't touch at all until I have an emergency. I would usually deposit a couple of thousands to tens of thousands to this account. And whatever I do, I basically will never touch this account unless an emergency happens. So, if you don't have an emergency fund right now, I would highly recommend depositing your savings to that first before we can talk about depositing into your savings account where you would be withdrawing money for expenses. Make sure to hit your set goal of the emergency fund before spending on anything huge. So, for example, let's say my target amount is 30,000. So every month, I would try and deposit some amount of money into that account, and once it hits 30,000, I can start saving my money to have some expenses like, let's say, a new phone or a new tablet for my school.
1. **Investments account**: Now, this is very, very case to case because personally, I stopped depositing to my investments account recently because I'm at a stage in my life where I don't really need to invest right now because I'm planning on building capital first before opening a separate business. If you live in a place like the US, you have these investments called the S&P 500 or the 401k, which is essentially it's kind of like investing into the top 500 blue-chip stocks in the US. But if I remember correctly, that's how the S&P 500 works. So, I would highly recommend depositing some amount of money and just leaving it there. Don't freaking touch it at all. Just leave it there until you're rich. Now, I know a lot of you guys live in different countries, so it really depends on your country. I can't really say one solution that fits for all. There are applications that you can invest in US chip stocks, but I would highly recommend not really depositing your money until you really fully know the app, and it really depends on the country, so I can't really say.

Now, a lot of people split their money in their savings in different ways, but personally, I don't really do that. I personally prefer filling up my emergency fund first and then just dumping everything into my savings account and potentially splitting 10% of my savings into an investment account. That's pretty much the rule that I've always followed every time I receive my paycheck. So, yeah, there's that.

## Big Purchases

Now, what's a rule that I follow whenever I spend on something big like this iPhone? So, obviously, my budget of 15,000 is not going to cover this phone. So, how was I able to cover this? Well, let's just say that this purchase was less than 10% of my entire savings. As long as a purchase is smaller than around **10 to 20% of my savings account**, then I'm perfectly fine with spending money.

Now, there are certain cases where I spent a bit more than that, but that's practically for business. It's sort of a purchase for ROI. But any personal purchases like a phone like this, my personal rule is that the entire cost of this must be lesser than 20% of my savings income. Obviously, you can tweak that amount. It can be 50% if you're still a student and you're still under your parents and you're just still relying on allowances. So, obviously, if you're still relying on allowances, you're not going to be able to save a lot because you're going to be spending it mostly on rent, food, and everything. You could pretty much change the percentage of your savings account in which you're able to spend. So, for some people, it could be 50%, some people could be 40%, but personally for me, I would highly recommend 20 to 10% of your savings account. And that's why I was able to buy this without any guilt because this whole phone was less than 10% of my savings account.

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed today's video. I know it's kind of a messy video, but I really hope that gave you some insight on how I pretty much manage my money. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed today's video. I'll see you in the next one. Manage your money well and don't forget to drink your water. Bye.