Welcome To The Modern Piggy Bank

Welcome to The Modern Piggy Bank. Most likely you stumbled across us on your search to save more or make your money work for you. Either way, we’re happy you’re here.

The Modern Piggy Bank is a brand new website with the goal of cutting through all the nonsense that litters the internet of how to utilize your money to minimize your expenses and optimize your savings. You aren’t going to find where to get the best deals on $10 wine here or how to eat Bougie on a budget, what you’re going to find is solid research, tried and true techniques, and our own personal stories.

Most likely, we are just like you. We’re two really good friends that just graduated from Penn State and secured our full time jobs. Mike works in aerospace while I work at a startup. We live in two separate areas of the country now but during our four years in college we worked hard to put our dreams for a successful business into life.

We tried a lot of different ideas in college, a lot that never panned out but what mattered to us was that we were trying. We tried everything from delivering home cooked meals made by neighborhood “moms” to committing arbitrage on Amazon. What really drew us in was investing and that is where our passion lies. I did my internships at an asset management firm with $1.5 billion under management while Mike spent his time building planes and focusing on engineering. Yet we both knew we wanted to focus on investing. Fast forward a couple of years later and we secured our jobs and starting making real money.

We realized pretty quickly that with real money comes real expenses. And so The Modern Piggy Bank was born. The goal of this website is not to sell you some product that an advertiser wants to push. But to actually inform you of your choices as a retail banking client, a retail investor, and an average American who wants to make the most out of their money or as Mike and I constantly remind each other, the goal is to minimize expenses while optimizing savings.

“With real money comes real expenses”- Will Hershon

We love the challenge of investing and the rewards you can get from it and one day hope to have our own fund. But for now, we are working every day to save more, learn more, and invest wisely. I have goals to own real estate, mostly rental properties, and I’m going to document my experiences with that here. Mike wants to figure out better ETF and fund strategies that out perform the current indexes for lower costs.

We both really believe in the firm foundation theory of investing while Mike sometimes branches out in the more technical branches of algorithmic trading, considering his background in engineering, this isn’t surprising.

For now we’re both focusing on filling this website with the best information possible. I’ll be the first to admit we are going to make some mistakes, but we will also be the first people to fix them. We’re learning, just like you are. But we’re willing to share our successes and our mistakes. If we blow our budget on a night out we’re gonna write about how we fixed this in the future. When we buy our first rental property we’re going to write the process and what we looked for. Eventually we’re gonna have our portfolios up for you to see. Our views on investing, and the markets will be here as well.

The Modern Piggy Bank is going to focus on four major categories. Investing, Saving, Passive Income, and Education. Investing as you might have guessed is going to be focused on the markets and real estate. Saving is going to focus on the best ways to save money and the most efficient vehicles for doing so. Passive Income will take a little longer to build out as we believe that’s going to be focused more on maintaining the real estate portion of your portfolio, but I promise you, we will get there. And finally, Education. Education is where we will review and talk about the books we’re reading and the ideas we’re learning about, anything and everything helps when it comes to making smarter decisions with your money.

At The Modern Piggy Bank, we’re not going to give you some advice on how to save more from someone who heard it from someone’s brothers friends old roommate and how they managed to move out of their 500 square foot apartment and upgrade to a luxurious 700 square feet. We are going to give you our actual experiences right from our own lives of how we handle money, grow it, invest it, and save it. You’ll grow with us. No doubt, we will make mistakes at times. But we aren’t claiming to be perfect. We claim to be on a path few choose to actually follow yet all talk about.

Knowing what to do with your money is hard. I get it, and all of us at the Modern Piggy Bank struggle to some degree to save our money and make it go further. That’s why we set this website up. But when you get down to the bottom line, saving money isn’t rocket science (although Mike actually does rocket science).

If you’re looking for ways to shop the best deals on luxury items or make a quick buck by taking surveys online, this isn’t the website for you. There are plenty of great websites out there that will tell you how to do this. We are focused on other things, real ideas, true techniques, anything and everything that will help you grow your wealth and yourself.

Actual experiences right from our own lives

And with all that, welcome to The Modern Piggy Bank.

-Will Hershon

-Mike Andriopoulos

“Budget” Isn’t A Bad Word

“Spend your money wisely.”. I undoubtably heard this phrase upwards of a thousand times. Since my first job at 15 to every job I’ve held since, this phrase became a constant thought in my mind. But I’ll be the first to admit I haven’t always lived by it and that’s part of the reason I’m here today. Writing about my experiences and bringing you along on my journey and hopefully one of your own. I’ve wasted money on everything from designer shoes and wallets to Harley Davidson Motorcycles. Looking back now, each and every time I bought something I didn’t need, I learned a lesson.

Now, I’m fresh out of college and I have a goal of where in life I want to go and where I want to be. I’ll share that goal with you sometime in the future but in essence it comes down to freedom. And that’s why I have a budget. A budget sounds like the exact opposite of freedom, you have to stick to it, live by it, and adjust it constantly. Not exactly what any of us want to be doing in our free time.

First things first, don’t make it a shoestring budget. Don’t think you can survive on $30 a week on groceries. Make it realistic. I over budget for my necessary expenses such as food so when I don’t meet that I put the rest away into a Roth IRA. Don’t think you need to cut your friends out of your life because you won’t be able to go out with them. Make room for your social life, it’s important for your health and you’ll be happier for doing it.

My main categories that I budget for on a monthly basis are:

Rent
Utilities
Groceries
Student Loans
Gas
Apollo (my dog)
Social life

These major categories allow me to budget for what I consider important while also allocating a certain amount a month towards my savings account and my retirement accounts.

In a perfect world, I’d meet all of my budget requirements with my first paycheck of the month and commit the entirety of the second towards savings, real estate, investing, and retirement. But I’m not there yet, I will be someday and you all will follow me as I work towards that. For now I make do with sticking to my budget and growing my savings and my Roth IRA.

For the first couple of months it was really tough, the biggest thing I noticed was that I was going out to eat with coworkers for lunch or drinks after work and that was killing my budget. It’s hard to say no to a drink after a long day and I’m not saying you should but just be aware of where your money is going. If you want to make another category on your budget for work related social life separate from your social life, feel free. Just don’t add too many categories that you’re left with nothing.

“Do not save what is left after spending, but spend what is left after saving.” -Warren Buffet

I can’t stress this enough. I’m an economics student and I understand about the life cycle of a consumer but it’s so important to start saving early and often. Don’t listen to the guys in your fraternity or sorority say that you should get as many credit cards as you qualify for and max them all out so you can enjoy college to the max.

I had an amazing college experience and came out with minimal debt (excluding student loans, which I’ll cover my experiences with at another time). But that small credit card debt didn’t become minimal until I neared graduation. That’s because like all 21 year olds fresh from their internships in NYC I was flushed with money and had a huge ego. Playing credit card roulette with my friends at the bar didn’t seem like a big deal. (For those of you that don’t know what this is, it’s when you and everyone you’re with puts their credit cards in a pile at the end of a night out and lets the waitress decide which card to put the entire tab on). I highly advise you not to do this. We rationalized it all works out in the end, let me assure you, it does not. So I didn’t budget well through college and it cost me heading in to the real world. Now I’m cognizant about what I spend my money on (and how tabs are separated) and where it goes. I know around how much I can spend on a night out and still be happy about it the next day. I know how often I should say yes to my coworkers and go grab that drink and still have money left over to put away in savings.

Seriously, don’t be afraid to budget. You can be as tough and strict on your budget as you want to be but my just putting the numbers down somewhere you will start making progress towards your goal. Small steps now mean huge returns in the future.

I’d like to put an excel sheet in here that you all can download and use to create your own budgets but we’re still fine tuning the website to be optimized for that sort of thing. For now, if you’re interested in putting together a better budget, or start one altogether, reach out in the contact me section. It’ll go straight to my email and we can set up a time to talk and I’ll be able to send you the tools needed from there.

Making The Most Out Of Your Savings Account

Know How To Make The Most of Your Savings

Why You Have A Savings Account

It’s always important for anyone and everyone to make the most of their money. Have it go further, spend it better, save it, and ultimately just have more of it. When most people think of their money they probably think how they can save better and how they can make more. Sure, there’s ton of online advice that shows the things you can do every month: create a side hustle, take some surveys, or get cash back on the things you were going to buy anyway. Yes, we admit these are all great things and would never discourage someone from working to make an extra dollar but like Warren Buffet said “If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.”

“If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.”

For most people they only make money while they are awake and at their jobs. So lets start talking about simple ways to make money while asleep. Because if you have to put in extra hours to make more money you’re just trading your time for that money. Enter savings accounts and compounding interest. Defined by Buffet as the “8th wonder of the world” (We’re gonna reference Buffet a lot through our articles, he is one of our main role models), compounding interest is the vehicle that lets your money make money and that money make even more money, all from the safety and security of your FDIC insured bank account.

You Already Have A Savings Account, So Who Cares?

All savings account aren’t made equal though and in the current environment of rising interest rates it’s good to look around and really understand how much your money is growing without effort or risk.

Chances are you probably have the same bank your parents set up an account for you at sometime early in your life, or you went to a college town where the options were few and had to open an account at the popular bank there. Our school gave the option of opening a college account right from orientation that would like up with our student ID’s. Nothing says starting College off right than a new bank account and maybe even a new credit card for all that responsible drinking you’re going to be doing.

There’s plenty to say good about the big national banks but when you look at the rate of interest they return on your savings, they are anything but at the top of the pack. I recently moved to a new city and neither bank I had accounts in in the North East existed down south so I took a dive through online articles comparing bank accounts and savings accounts while also hitting the pavement and going to local credit unions to try and decide what’s right for me. And that’s a tough question to answer and we advise you to think long and hard about what you need from a bank or credit union before you switch. This part takes a little more thought and we caution that you should not just jump in to a new account.

Now, I know it seems a little daunting but you can have your savings in one place and your checking in another. Personally, I use Marcus by Goldman Sachs. They offer approximately 16x the national average for interest on savings accounts and have incredible ease of access that everyone will love. There are no fees attached and your money starts compounding daily, starting the very first day your deposit hits their accounts. But there is a slight catch. Marcus only offers savings accounts and personal loans so you will have to keep your checking elsewhere. For me, dit was easiest to choose the local credit union that has an unbelievable ease of access in my city and also lets me tap into the Credit Union Network of ATM’s anywhere in the world, giving me quick and easy access to cash, at no fee whatsoever. There’s also the added benefit of credit unions that they usually offer lower rates on their big purchase loans such as home and auto and as someone looking at getting into real estate investing, this was extremely important to me.

Getting back to interest however, it’s what allows your money to grow from $100 to $101.85 in a year (if you use the current rate offered by Marcus) without even thinking about it. Yes’m, I realize that’s not a lot but let’s say you start with $1,000 in savings. You have a compounding interest rate of 1.85% and you don’t plan on touching your savings for at least 3 years. Without making any more deposits you will make an additional $57. I know, I know, this doesn’t seem like a lot but expand

this formula out and you’ll really see the benefit and magic of compounding interest and shopping around for the best rate.

Bringing It All Home

Let’s say you just graduated college, and for us, we just did. We’ve got $4,000 that I didn’t blow in college that I saved up from my internship. I’ve got my first job and I’m making enough to pay the bills and have some left over. In a conservative scenario, after accounting for my expenses like my social life and a dog, let’s say I can contribute $300 a month to that already $4,000 in savings. At the end of 3 years, if no withdrawals are made, I’ll have made an extra $521 dollars. Way outpacing the current rate of inflation. Going even beyond those three years and you;’re compounding on all of that as well. And that’s the magic of compounding interest.

It won’t get you rich quick but it will help you grow over the long term and that’s what the Modern Piggy Bank is all about.