Personal Finance: Changes in Content and Approach

Graham Stefan took a break due to his wedding, plans to post fewer, more nuanced finance videos, and focus on podcasting.

### Graham Stephan's Life Update and Reflections on YouTube Content
* 💍  Graham Stephan recently got married after two years of being engaged, and he decided to **disconnect from work and his phone** to be **fully present on his wedding day**, which he found to be an **unforgettable and impactful experience**.
* 📱  He realized that he was "glued to [his] phone" and had a hard time breaking the habit of constantly checking it, with studies showing a **direct link between cell phone usage and a person's ability to concentrate**.
* 📊  Graham acknowledged that the basics of personal finance, such as **saving, investing in index funds, and increasing income**, remain consistent and repetitive, and he often finds himself creating videos on **similar topics**.
* 🔄  Due to the constant influx of new and old subscribers on YouTube, Graham believes that the **core message of his videos needs to be repeated frequently**, as it is unlikely that **new viewers will go back to watch his old videos**.
* 📅  After eight years of posting videos on YouTube, Graham decided to only create content when he has **something new to share** or when he is **personally excited about a topic**, aiming for **more nuanced and in-depth videos**.
* ☕  Graham expressed that he enjoys making more **laid-back, casual, and less scripted videos**, which his audience also seems to prefer, and he is considering blending the **casual style with the information-dense videos** he typically creates.
* 🎙️  Apart from his main channel, Graham is continuing to post regularly on his podcast channel, the Iced Coffee Hour, and he has lined up some **"incredible guests"** for the upcoming episodes.

So first of all, if it wasn't obvious from the title, this is not going to be my normal personal finance market update style video like I usually do. Don't worry, those are coming back soon, but from now on, they're going to be a little bit different. Moving forward, as I'll explain shortly. Anyway, with this one, I want to take a moment and talk about a few recent changes in my life, and hopefully you'll find these experiences helpful, or at the very least, maybe you'll find it interesting in terms of what's going on. Otherwise, like I said, if you're here for the normal what's going on with stocks and housing and the overall economy, like I said, that will be coming back next week. It's just not going to be in this week's video, so just you could skip past this if you don't care, but if you do care, just I guess keep watching. All right, so now that we got that out of the way, you might have noticed, or maybe not, that I haven't posted a video here in the last 3 weeks.

on the channel, which is the longest break I have ever taken by far in the last 7 and 1 half years, like without exaggeration. Since early 17, I made it my mission to post three videos here a week, every single Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, no matter what, except if it fell on a major holiday, in which case it would just post the next day. Now, even though I absolutely love making these videos, the reality is that it was all I could ever think about. It's all I ever focused on. And as soon as I was done making one video, I might have a few hours of mental downtime before I'd have to immediately start thinking about the next one, which created a few unique problems that I'll talk about a little later on. But I digress. As I alluded to in my previous video, after 2 years of being engaged, we just got married. And since this was the first time in my entire life that we've had everyone that I care about in the same place at the same time, I decided to

completely disconnect from work and my phone, and just spend time with people I care about, and be in the moment. And as much as people said your wedding day would fly by in the blink of an eye, they were completely right. Like, admittedly, standing here, but I always thought that weddings were the biggest Financial upsell on the planet. Like, when we started looking at venue options, flower options, food options, and ery Services, anything you could think of, there's definitely a premium that gets tacked onto everything that triples the cost from any other event. And yeah, I know, I know, everyone says you can't put a price on your wedding day. I get that. You know what? After going through it, I have to say you're right. At the end of the day, after almost two years of planning, even though it came in slightly above where we initially thought it would cost, it was an unforgettable day, and it was something that was so much more impactful than I ever expected it to be. I think in the back of my mind, I just

always thought about the simplest option of going to the courthouse to sign the papers, renting out an Airbnb, catering, throttle for the food, going to Costco for the drinks, and just keeping things easy. But I'm so glad we didn't do that, and I absolutely would have done the entire day over if I could. You know, someone said to me a few months ago that a wedding is going to be the only time in your entire life that you're going to have all the people who care about you in the same room at the same time, that's not a funeral. And the more I thought about that, the more that's absolutely true. I think for most people, it's probably going to be the only time while they're alive that they'll have this sort of turnout for something that's positive. So being able to be mentally present the entire time was unforgettable. Oh, side note, fun fact, but I actually had my podcast co-host Jack officiate the wedding because why not, and apparently it's really easy to get

certified online for that sort of thing, so we decided to do it. Plus, he could now say in a YouTube title, I married Graham Stefan, and it's technically true. Anyway, I also thought it was incredibly special that Macy and I were able to make our own wedding rings when we visited Japan. To me, this means so much more than anything else that money could buy because we did this together and we designed it ourselves. It just makes it that much more unique. Of course, in hindsight, having been through all of this, if I could have done anything differently, there's really not much. But if there's anything, it would have been that I wished I invited more people. Like, we purposely tried to keep it really small to immediate family and really close friends, but there were just so many other people that we would have loved to have shared the day with. So, I would say if anyone's getting married, if the budget supports it and the venue allows for slightly more people, it's probably better to invite slightly more than slightly less. All Things

Considered because the cost doesn't really go up that much per person. Beyond a certain amount, it's negligible, but if you could make it work, I'd recommend more than less beyond that, though, as far as being able to spend some time with family. I guess I never truly understood just how glued to my phone I was until I spent a few days without it while everyone was in town. Like I've always heard about phone addiction and the problem with constantly checking notifications, but I was able to rationalize it because, in a way, it's my job, and I need to be kept up to date with what's going on in the markets to be able to create content around it. But yeah, that habit is extremely hard to break. For instance, if you want to hear something scary, apparently 99% of smartphone users feel scared and anxious if their phones are accidentally left behind. The average person unlocks their phone 150 times a day, more than half never switch it off, and several studies show a direct link between cell phone usage and a person's ability to

concentrate, and thankfully, being able to concentrate on a single task has never been an issue for me. I think it's the only reason why I was able to ever get out so many uploads without ever missing a video. But being mentally present, on the other hand, has been an issue, and just having my phone on me makes it way too easy to constantly check, even if there's nothing new to look at. I suppose it's been one of these areas where I acknowledge I lack self-control, so I've made more of a conscious effort to put some distance between myself and my phone when I don't absolutely need it. And I will say firsthand, my gosh, makes such a big difference. I don't know, it just seems more and more common that people are just heads down to their phone, glued to the algorithms of social media that are designed to keep you engaged as long as possible, that we lose out on the chance to create and foster real connections in places that matter the most. The second I'd like to take a

moment and address another double-edged sword of social media, and that's content, or more specifically, put the finance space. I'm going to level with everybody. I've said it a few dozen times in the past, and I'm going to repeat it again here too. When it comes to personal finance and the basics, they don't change, and after a while, it's going to start sounding repetitive. Like, for the most part, a few basic principles form just about 99% of everything you would ever need to know when it comes to saving money, building wealth, and investing. Beyond that, unless you're interested in macroeconomics or picking individual stocks, you just end up repeating the same things over and over and over again until eventually you have enough money that you could retire or buy a Lamborghini or do whatever you want with the money. I don't care. The point is you have the money to be able to do what you want. As an example of that, for anybody wondering, here's how you can manage your money like the 1%.

really just comes down to this, and we could cover it all in like under a minute. Here we go: track your expenses, create a budget where you spend less money than you make, save a 3- to 6-month emergency fund, pay down all high-interest rate debt, always pay off your credit cards in full, take advantage of your retirement accounts including your employer match in a 401K, Roth IRA, HSA, a taxable account, and then maximize those options as much as you can. From there, you could expand your skills to eventually make more money, preferably save 20% or more of your income, and then repeat those exact same steps for the next 20 or 30 years. If you could just do that, most likely you're going to retire a multi-millionaire. Or how about this one: when it comes to investing, it really just comes down to this. It could really be this simple: Diversified index funds outperform individual stock picking over the long run for most people. Studies show that a Buy and Hold investment strategy beats timing the

market dollar-cost average on a regular basis, regardless of what prices are. Make sure you diversify your holdings across a wide spectrum of markets. And if you're young, in some cases, just one or two index funds would be able to accomplish all of this. I'd probably venture to say that for most of you watching, if you just followed this and anything you had a question on, you just used Google or YouTube, that's all you need to be financially independent. And I could stop there. All my videos from here on out could just be that. But you know what, I'll tell you what typically ends up happening. Someone will stumble upon one of my videos for the very first time, get very excited about the possibility of one day retiring with hopefully a lot of money. They get started and then eventually they move on to something else because they realize it's just 20 to 30 years or more of repeating the exact same things every single day. And beyond the basics, there's really not much more to do. That's why with a channel like

mine there's only so many ways I could say to track your expenses live below your means find a low-cost Index Fund to dollar cost average into on a regular basis and then let compound interest do its thing done of course I know there's also a lot of people out there that love the fact that I just repeat the same consistent Foundation no matter what on a regular basis because it helps keep them on track I think it's the same reason why I watch a lot of Fitness influencers because it keeps me motivated to like keep going to the gym and eat healthy and like to stay on track and sometimes that ends up helping I acknowledge this is the case and why I've also made an effort to switch it up from time to time but it's also why the general philosophies of the videos are going to be pretty much consistent no matter if you watch today or if you watch seven years ago on top of that I just think I'd go mentally berserk if every video every single week said the

exact same thing without any variance whatsoever. So I try to talk about topics as well that I personally find interesting, or just feel like discussing or diving into, and then from there I could sprinkle back in the basics for people who haven't seen my previous videos and aren't familiar with it. For example, the unfortunate reality with YouTube is that it's extremely rare that anyone will ever go back to watch my old videos, even though a lot of the information back then is just as relevant today. This means that unless a video is posted in the last month, there is a very high likelihood that no new viewers are ever going to see that video. And on YouTube, it's a constant revolving door of new and old subscribers. Not to mention, somebody's got to say it, but the YouTube search feature is absolutely horrible for finding and searching through videos. So you're somewhat up to the algorithm's whims in terms of whether or not you'll come across something of value. Like, let's use the example of my old Roth IRA video. This is

an account that most young people don't even know about. And unless they come across it on their own, they're unlikely to ever find it. Which is one of the reasons why I like to post an updated version of these videos every year or so. As new policies and limits change. From this perspective, I am definitely a part of the problem in terms of why the core message of my videos gets repeated so often. I suppose when you really get down to it, it's probably a good thing. But it doesn't make for engaging round-the-clock content that YouTube really rewards. And that people want more of. And so, I acknowledge that that's definitely something that I've had to somewhat combat here on YouTube. It's also been a relatively new change on my channel. Not to force a video when there's nothing to talk about. Because for the longest time, that was the only way to stay on top of the YouTube algorithm. And if you didn't do that, YouTube would deprioritize your content and not show it as much. Because you're

not posting as frequently. I say all of this because when you're making three videos a week on a personal finance channel, where oftentimes there's nothing new to talk about, I found myself very often just creating videos for the sake of creating videos. And that's clearly not a sustainable path long term. Like, sure, there are plenty of topics out there that I can't wait to make a video on. I get so excited, decide to plan it out, and film it. I get so pumped over posting it. But there are other videos that I do because I just know people enjoy them, and I have a sense of obligation to the people who keep coming back, who like the information, and maybe it helps them stay on track, or it's something for them to listen to while they're driving, or they cook, or they're at the gym, anything else like this. Like if I could provide any sort of help to anybody watching, that makes it worth it for me. But I will admit, it'll be eight years of posting videos here on YouTube this December.

with over 2,300 uploads across three channels and an additional 1,350 videos clipped from that content. My goal is to only post when there's something new I could share or with a topic that I'm just personally excited to talk about. This means the videos you'll see might be a little more nuanced. They might be a little bit more in-depth than what you're previously accustomed to, or they could just be topics that I find interesting and I want to discuss. Now, separate from that, though, I'm still posting normally on my podcast channel, the Iced Coffee Hour. I'm really excited that we've lined up some incredible guests over the next month. We've pre-recorded some really great episodes, so I'm actually really excited for some of these to post. You've got to stay tuned, go and subscribe there to see some of these guests, because we've got a few big ones that are coming up and surprised even me. Oh, and lastly, I just want to say that I've much preferred lately making

these sort of videos that tend to be a lot more laid-back, more casual, less scripted, and it seems overall that you guys enjoy these sorts of videos too, as opposed to like the information-dense videos at my other desk. Sometimes I enjoy those, but for more casual discussions, I tend to prefer this, so let me know what you think as well. Down below in the comment section, perhaps what I could end up doing is just blending some of those like information-dense videos with like a podcast style here, with less of like the moving hands for audience retention. I get it, move the hands a lot, but you know what, it does help when people are watching a video. I do see an uptick in retention, but anyway, maybe I blend the two and I try something here that's more casual. So again, let me know what you think. So that's the update on my end. I'm excited to get back to posting and continuing to bring you more information. And just for the sake of staying consistent, make sure to track your

expenses save as much money as possible live below your means dollar-cost average into an index fund on a regular basis for decades no matter what hit the like button and subscribe if you haven't done that already thanks until next time

I'm not engaged anymore..

As a 30 year old real estate agent and investor who started working in real estate shortly after turning 18, with over $120,000,000 in residential real estate sales since 2008, I've created this channel to share my successes, failures, and experiences in the real estate industry and to support others who are thinking of getting into the business. Oh, and I'm also obsessed with cars. A lot. So expect to see some cars uploaded to my channel. A lot. And Subscribe. Because all the cool kids are doing it.  

Feel free to follow me on Snapchat / Instagram: GPStephan

Graham Stephan

A Personal Update: My Unplanned Break and Wedding Experience

I took an unplanned 3-week break from my usual video posting schedule for the first time in 7 years to focus on my wedding and disconnect from work.

The wedding planning process was unexpectedly expensive, but the experience was ultimately unforgettable and more impactful than anticipated.

The Unforgettable Experience of My Wedding Day

The wedding was a unique and unforgettable experience, with a special focus on having loved ones present.

The speaker's podcast co-host officiated the wedding, and they designed their own wedding rings, adding to the day's significance.

In hindsight, the speaker wished they had invited more people to share the day with and realized the challenge of reducing phone dependency during the event.

The Challenge of Staying Focused and the Repetitiveness of Financial Advice

Constantly checking the phone affects mental presence, leading to a lack of real connections.

The repetitive nature of financial advice, focused on basic principles, makes it sound monotonous after a while.

The key to managing money like the wealthy is simple and can be explained in under a minute.

The Key to Financial Independence and YouTube Content

Consistently market dollar-cost average regardless of prices, diversify holdings, and consider index funds for financial independence.

Despite repeating the same foundational advice, the creator strives to keep viewers motivated and engaged while acknowledging the challenge of retaining audience interest.

The nature of YouTube's platform makes it difficult for old videos to reach new viewers, leading to a constant need to balance repetitive information with new content.

The Challenge of Creating Engaging YouTube Content

Posting frequent, repetitive content is a struggle to maintain YouTube's algorithmic favor.

The creator aims to shift towards more meaningful and exciting topics, despite feeling obligated to cater to viewers' preferences.

Additionally, the creator is enthusiastic about upcoming podcast episodes with exciting guests.

Blending Information-Dense Videos with Casual Podcast Style

The speaker is considering blending casual, laid-back videos with information-dense content.

They are seeking feedback on this approach from the audience.

The update also includes a reminder for the audience to track expenses and save money consistently.