Hey everybody. Welcome to Invested. I'm Danielle Town. My dad is off this week. He's not feeling amazing.

And I thought I'd take the opportunity to talk about something just quickly that I've been thinking

about a lot when it comes to where to put my money as we come into the holiday season.

I always, I love getting gifts for people.

It's one of my love languages.

It's one of my great joys.

I also love not having my savings account go down and down and down.

And I think we all balance that in different ways every year at the end of the year. So something that's

been helping me, just a little mental model that I use, is to remember that either way I win.

So if I have two, let's say, imaginary accounts, and one is the account for investing,

and the other one is the account for life expenses optional gifts optional travel

rent everything that has to be paid just all that stuff and then there's investing which is

separate so i think when there's something that's required, let's say rent or mortgage, okay, yes, that goes.

That's, I win because I get a place to live.

If there's something that's optional, which a lot of my spending is, you know, like I can go to a more expensive restaurant or a less expensive restaurant.

I can buy the more expensive strawberries or the less expensive strawberries. I can buy the more expensive strawberries or the less

expensive strawberries. We all make these tiny or big decisions over and over probably a hundred

times a day. It's the ones where I sort of stand there and think about it, where this mental

model helps me. I think either way I win. Either this money,

I do not spend it and it goes into my investing account and I get access to it to do whatever

I want with it later. Maybe it grows. Maybe it stays there and waits

for a great opportunity in the future. Either way, it's there for me. Or, which is like a huge win,

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