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Who is Midtown Money?

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Midtown money has everything you need to know about money. We are here to help you navigate and understand your own personal finances, investing, paying off debt, etc. We take complex topics and make them easy to understand.

Everyone has a different situation and we are looking help you navigate through it with minimal stress and confidence. You could be here because you want to learn about investing. Maybe you want to learn about your own personal finances. Perhaps you are looking to pay off debt or save for a house.

Midtown Money is a personal finance blog providing advice to anyone that wants to make informed decisions with their money.

We will be posting articles to keep you informed on every finance related topic you may need. Additionally, we will have a newsletter you can subscribe to that will keep you informed.

Income

In this section, we will discuss various topics on how you can earn more money, maximize your current earnings, second incomes, etc.

Grow

Here we will break down on how you can grow your money to meet various financial targets you have. This section will revolve around various investing topics.

Personal Finance

This revolves around your daily personal finances and making sure you are understanding all the various products that are available to you or may be using.

Retire

Lastly, this will break down everything you need to know for retirement including saving for retirement, ideal retirement balance, etc.

If there is a topic or issue you need help with, feel free to comment or email, and we will help. While you may think you are alone on this issue, I can guarantee there are thousands of other people who need help with it.

Whatever you need, we are here to help you!

Emergency Fund

Personal Finance

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According to a study done by CNBC, roughly 60% of Americans don’t have enough money saved to cover a $1,000 emergency. Saving a small amount in an emergency fund can go a long way in an emergency event. An emergency fund is a fund you have set aside to assist with any financial hardship life may throw your way. When life throws these unexpected events your way, these can be very stressful and costly.

The top emergency expenses are the following:

Job Loss;
Medical;
Home and car repairs.

As a rule of thumb, your emergency fund should be between 3 months – 6 months worth of monthly expenses. The size of your fund varies by person depending on your lifestyle, costs, and income. While saving this much seems scary and stressful, the best way to chip away at it is to put away small amounts every week, month, etc.

Simple Calculation:

1.) How much is your monthly mortgage or rent?

2.) How much do you spend on utilities, internet, phone bill, etc?

3.) How much do you spend on food each month?

4.) How much do you spend on transportation costs? (Metro card, car payment, car insurance, etc.)

5.) How much do you spend on other expenses? (Health care, personal care/fun, etc).

Once you have figured out this and add up all the totals, multiple this by 3 or 6 to get your 3-month and 6-moth emergency fund.

When you start your emergency fund, you should place the fund in an easily accessible bank account. I place mine in an online-savings account since it is an account I don’t keep my main funds in. This helps me not get into bad spending habits and access my money when I don’t need it. Additionally, the online savings account earns a higher interest rate than my main account.

Having this set up helps you keep your stress levels down and remain calm when an emergency does happen. When you are prepared and have money saved away, this will not threaten your financial well-being since you are already prepared for a crisis. When you are prepared for an unexpected event, this will reduce your chances of making a bad financial decision such as taking out a high-interest loan or putting the expense on your credit card to make it through the event. Additionally, having this set aside will give you confidence in your day to day life as you can handle unexpected events.

Once your emergency fund is set up, you will be well prepared to handle the unexpected twists life throws at you and can live life how you want.

Investing with Little Money

Grow
Retire

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For most people, investing seems like a daunting and complex task that only the people of Wall Street can do.

The reality is that you don’t need to work on Wall Street to start investing. By understanding the basics of investing, only saving a few dollars every month will grow with compound interest.

Budgeting

The key to building long-term wealth starts with developing good habits and understanding your expenses. Tracking your income and expenses sounds boring since nobody wants to take the time and input all this into excel unless you’re like me and love excel.

If you’re not a fan of spreadsheets, like most people, there are apps out there, like Mint and Clarity, etc, that can track your spending habits and give you monthly reports. The reason you should try this is you will quickly learn a few things about your financial habits that you may have not known.

I recently saw a post on LinkedIn that mentioned how much someone was saving during the current work from home environment. Over four months, the man saved over $3,000 from transportation to eating out for lunch every day at work.

Now I know everyone does not have expenses like this, but once you learn about yourself and have some money to play with, you can start creating wealth. Setting money aside to invest, can build wealth over the long term.

Once you figure how much you can allocate to investing, you can start to automate the process like your bills. Most online savings accounts and broker services have a setting where you can set up a recurring deposit every month into your account.

A good way to saving money to invest is to create an online savings account such as American Express, Marcus by Goldman Sachs, etc. Setting a savings target such as $30 a month, $10 a week, etc. is a good that will set you up to invest. Additionally, online savings accounts offer better interest rates than most banks. Starting with a small amount of money is a good way to start the process.

Since investing has become more mobile, you can invest very little so you can get comfortable with investing before making a bigger commitment. This is a great way to learn about investing while only risking a small amount of money.

Investing comes in a variety of options and investing for beginners is easier than ever before. Once you start you’ll see how addictive investing and creating wealth is.