Layne Steffen Financial Coach

10/06/2026

7 Bad Habits I Replaced With Good Ones

1. Phone first thing in the morning → water, prayer, and my Bible first
2. Games on my phone → deleted them. I know I can't control myself.
3. Waking up to a messy kitchen → a 10-minute nightly reset
4. Scrolling before bed → my phone has a bedtime before I do
5. Hitting snooze → phone across the room
6. Easy online shopping → we deleted Amazon from our phones
7. "I'll read more someday" → one page every morning

None of these were big changes. They just added up.

Less stuff, fewer apps, fewer decisions. That's most of it.

I wrote down 50 rules like these that simplified my home and my life.

P.S. The 50 minimalist rules that changed how my home and my life feel are linked in the comments.

09/26/2026

Gas is flirting with $5/gal at my local gas station. ⛽
Diesel is hovering around $7/gal. 🚚
Beef prices are around $7/pound. 🐄
Mortgage rates surged past 7% this week. 🏠

These fluctuations have real life impact to personal financial planning and monthly budgets as well as broader economic changes. 💹

Tips to stay level-headed and agile:

1. A good budget will have some margin built into it to accommodate frequent fluctuations such as fuel prices.

2. Its OKAY to change habits in light of price changes - in fact, its necessary. You may have to rethink traveling, look to do some carpooling, reduce beef intake, etc., but adjusting expectations based on what you can actually afford versus what you want to afford is normal for the vast majority of people, even the wealthy!

3. When things get tight unexpectantly, avoid going into debt to maintain the status quo. If changing a habit to reduce spending is difficult, is there a side gig you can do to increase income or a personal item you can sell for short term help?

Its important to admit that things like changing fuel and food prices and mortgage rates really do impact our bottom-line. One of the worst things you can do is pretend it's not a factor and fail to adjust lifestyle, budgets, and plans accordingly.

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09/18/2026

Well said - important nuances here!

Being frugal and being cheap are NOT the same thing.

Being frugal is great. No matter how much money you have, you should probably always try to be somewhat frugal. My definition of frugal isn’t pinching pennies, it’s just seeking value for your money. I think if you give up a generally frugal mindset, you just start mindlessly throwing money at all your problems. Even if you have the money to sustain it, it’s not how you live a happy life. Just my perspective.

Being cheap, on the other hand, is a bad quality. It’s off putting to those around you, it leads you to making suboptimal decisions, and it generally makes your life worse in the long run. Price isn’t the only thing you should be looking at. It’s important to switch your mindset to a value driven approach. Try to use your money in the way that gets you the most, not just minimizes money out the door.

These are just some examples that hopefully illustrate my view of what it means to be frugal vs. cheap!

- Matt

09/05/2026

Helpful savings guide...

09/05/2026

I haven't posted in a while. My mind has been elsewhere the last few weeks. Because of this, it hit me again how important it is to have a financial plan. Because life happens. We get distracted. We lose interest. Priorities shift. 🎭

Having a financial plan with automated investing, regular giving, saving, and budgeting is absolutely paramount to building a stable and long-term future. 💯

Of course, life events may require financial adjustments such as temporarily reducing investing and that's okay. If you have a solid plan in motion, you can modify as needed in the moment to accommodate life's unexpected opportunities and set backs!

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08/15/2026

Investing tip #10 - Last one! Invest in yourself and others. 🏃‍♂️‍➡️

While stock market returns and compound interest grows a financial portfolio over time, taking care of your own mind, body, and soul and those around you will pay numerous benefits over the course of life.

Mind - always keep learning new things. Seek insights into how things work. Read a book. Try something new. 📖

Body - stay active, eat well, and regularly rest. 🛌

Soul - walk with God and live in harmony with those around you. ✝

Each of the above takes an investment of time, sacrifice, some pain, humility, and sometimes delayed gratification. But keep the return in mind. Focus on the ROI. And just like stock investing, develop regular patterns that promote and sustain your well-being.

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08/15/2026

This is why dollar cost averaging and automating regular investing is so important! Unless you have hours of time in a day and advanced analytical tools, keep it simple by regularly investing when the market is high and when the market is low.

This is going to ruffle some feathers... but you really shouldn’t be trying to “buy the dip.”

This is one of the most common phrases tossed around the investing world and at first glance, it makes sense. If you can “buy the dip,” you get a nice lower buy-in price and can ride it straight back up. More money in your pocket, right?!

Here is the thing though: no one really knows when a dip is coming. The market can be “overvalued” by whatever metric you want to look at (P/E, Buffett indicator, earnings yield, etc. etc.) and the market can continue to rip along for another year or more and gain substantial value. It can, and often does, surge beyond what a “dip” would bring it back to.

It’s really hard to internalize this, even for experienced investors, but the market reflects all current information. That means that if there was credible reason for the market to dip, it would already be in the dip.

This strategy of moving in and out of the market to get a lower buy-in price will make you a billionaire if you can do it with any semblance of reliability. Since you’re not a billionaire, you shouldn’t be trying to time the market.

Real wealth is built by buying and holding assets through the ups and downs. Unfortunately you’re not going to do better in the long term by trying to time market corrections.

- Matt

08/07/2026

👇

A frequent comparison among people who haven't learned about investing is that the stock market is like a casino and that buying stocks is equivalent to gambling your money.

From the outside, that might be what it looks like. You see rich getting richer, people blowing their life savings, and everything in between. Like most things in life though, the devil is in the details.

Part of what makes this confusing is that you CAN treat the stock market like a casino. Heck, there is multi-million person sub-reddit called WallStreetBets that doesn't even hide the fact that they are doing that. Short term fluctuations are effectively random, so if you throw your money in, it kind of is like a roulette table.

What's even MORE confusing is that some people research a ton, and then do what you see on this graph. They let their behavioral tendencies and fear get the best of them and they do the classic "buy high, sell low." To be a truly good investor, you have to be willing to wait WAY longer than any gambler or emotional stock buyer would wait to reap the benefits of your decision.

When you take guess work out of which stocks to buy by buying an index fund, and you take timing luck out of the equation by ALWAYS buying consistently, luck is eliminated from the investing equation.

Historically if you do this, you will ALWAYS make money over a decade plus long period. I'm not kidding, always. And if that's not true in the future? Well, if population growth stops, innovation grinds to a halt, and there is zero global efficiency improvement, your portfolio will be the least of your problems.

Buy an index fund and chill and you won't end up like our friend on the graph here. End of rant!

- Matt

P.S. I use SoFi for my high-yield savings account and they are running a sign-up bonus where you can get up to a $400 with opening a new account and connecting direct deposit. Comment "HYSA" and I'll send you a link to get your bonus!

07/31/2026

Investing tip #9 - Watch emotions😁🥺

If you were holding Microsoft yesterday, you would be quite elated. Pleasantly surprised maybe. But happy nonetheless. You may have even subtly felt like you were a savvy investor with good instincts.

If you were holding Meta, you would have been disappointed and frustrated. You'd feel lousy and deflated. You'd feel like a poor investor with bad intuition.

Yesterday was a good reminder for me that holding individual stocks for long term investing can be more emotional than it needs to be. The emotions described in both cases from yesterday are very real for people and can then make them buy or sell at the unwise times and make poor decisions.

Broad-based ETFs and mutual funds (many of which contain both Microsoft and Meta) are great investment tools for regular every day people who don't want to experience as many emotional rollercoasters that come with holding individual stocks.

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07/24/2026

Side hustles. Try one. Find something you enjoy doing that brings in some extra cash. This isn't required especially for those of us balancing family and work life already. But for short term goals, paying off a debt, or expanding your skill set, a side hustle can be rewarding both personally and financially!