What's in store for you:

1. Photo From My Life
2. Financial Thought: My Financial Stack
3. Life Thought: The Future
4. Good Sh*t: Beaufort

Photo From My Life:

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Financial Thought:

My Financial Stack: I spend a lot of time thinking about money. That’s probably not surprising given what I do for a living. But I've realized that most people think about money a lot because their financial life is disorganized and hard to wrap their head around. It's an organization issue.

I’d love to tell you my own setup is perfectly organized. It’s not. I still have old accounts that should probably be closed. I have a few tools that overlap. If I were starting over today, I’d simplify quite a bit.

But over time I’ve settled into a system that works for our family. Everything falls into four buckets.

Bucket One: Day to Day Life

This is the money we use to live our life. Money comes in. Bills get paid. Credit cards get used. Our goal here is simple. One primary checking account, one primary credit card, and as little complexity as possible. But, as you'll see below, we still have an extra credit card and two old checking accounts. Be better Andy!

Bucket Two: Investments

This is where money goes to grow. Most of our assets sit in boring retirement and brokerage accounts. Then there’s a smaller bucket of things like business ownership, private investments, and a little bit of crypto.

Bucket Three: Tracking & Planning

For a data nerd like me, this is important. I’ve maintained a personal balance sheet for more than a decade. It tells me where we are today. Then I use a financial plan and spending tracker to help understand whether or not we're headed where we want to go.

Bucket Four: Business

My wife and I both work for ourselves, so we’ve learned to keep business and personal finances completely separate. Different accounts. Different cards. Clean lines.

So here are the tools I use. As you'll see, it's not perfectly clean, but it works for me.

Life Thought:

The Future: I think a lot about the future. Whether it's driven by fear or curiosity, I'm not really sure. I sit somewhere between AI maximalist and AI is overrated depending on the day. The technology is absolutely amazing and it has already unlocked increased efficiency across medicine, technology, and much, much more. But until chip technology advances and costs come down, it's expensive even with subsidies from VC investors. Thank you, we appreciate your service.

I'd be lying if I said certain things don't scare me. Will we need humans to do anything? What will my kids study in college? Will college even exist?! These are big problems and concerns. I imagine it's no different than what a lot of people thought during the industrial revolution or the somewhat more-recent launch of the internet. However, I keep coming back to one thing. People like doing business with people. This might change, but as humans, our life is more than efficiency. We get utility out of working with others and having human to human connection.

Tim Ferriss, a legendary self-help author, wrote this past week about how his book sales have plummeted since AI launched a few years ago. You no longer need to read his book the 4-hour body because ChatGPT or Claude will come up with a personalized and tailored weight loss and fitness strategy for you. His belief is that non-fiction as a category will slowly cease to exist.

You could say the same about wealth management and the content that I create. It doesn't matter if it's on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or Instagram. Someone can distill my 10-minute video on whether or not they should pay off their mortgage early into 5-6 sentences using these magical tools.

So why do I invest so much time in making educational content and writing this newsletter? It comes back to a belief that people like to do business with people. People need interaction. People need accountability more than anything. My newsletters tend to lean more personal than how-to. That's because I crave the same connection that everyone wants. My whole goal with this business is to work with 30-40 families that I care about and enjoy supporting and spending time with. The people I work with should know exactly who they’re partnering with.

Anyway, that's my long ramble about the future. As you all know, we can't control the future. We can control how we show up on a daily basis for our family, our colleagues, our clients, and the people we interact with at the grocery store or gas station. We shouldn't waste an opportunity to be the kindest and best version of ourselves.

Good Sh*t:

Beaufort: Molly and I spent a night in Beaufort this past weekend and were shocked by how much we liked it. We didn’t really have much of a plan. We walked around, looked at old houses, wandered through the historic downtown, ate a good dinner, and just enjoyed slowing down for a bit.

The town is absolutely beautiful, has a ton of revolutionary war and civil ware history, and feels like one of those places that hasn’t changed much over the last hundred years. As we walked around multiple people said hi to us from their porches. Clearly the Southern charm still exists here!

If you’re looking for an easy overnight trip somewhere in the Southeast, I’d highly recommend putting Beaufort on your list.

Disclaimer: VDB Wealth is a registered investment adviser. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.

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