What We Do
“Sage” means wisdom, like “sage advice.” I want to help you build sage habits into your daily routine and yearly goals.
While I started this adventure in articles and videos to help others, it was also a chance to crystallize my own thoughts about the sage—and sometimes the very not sage—decisions and habits I had built over the past decades of adulthood.
Understand Money. This was the first topic I landed on as the bedrock foundation of a sage lifestyle. You need to continually answer the question of how can you make smart financial decisions and create daily systems to enable your choices to create wealth over many years. From huge purchases and enormous income decisions, all the way down to daily expenditures that become impactful after hundreds of repetitions, I discovered that using money well was the largest component component of wise living.
Get Organized. It turns out that to consistently make money and keep it, though, you need a plan. The plan requires components, and the components need deadlines and goals and milestones and order. Organizing areas such as money, possessions, time, and every other part of your life become critical to your sage journey. Whether it’s keeping detailed track of a budget so you can avoid overspending, or doing home maintenance that prevents a huge repair bill, or just being able to file a complete tax return, organization, money, and wealth are inextricably linked.
Grow your Career. Once you get organized and see where all the dollars are going, you start to feel pretty good. You’re saving, prioritizing purchases that make you happy, and setting long-term goals. At some point, however, I see the same question materialize in the journey of almost everyone I work with: how can I go faster? That’s when you realize that you should begin to work on the income side of the budget equation. For most people, that will mean leveling-up in your career. Whether it’s getting a promotion, finding a new job, changing careers or starting a business of your own, we’re here to help.
Stay Healthy. Finally, a huge component of wise living and being a sage is how you treat your body and your health. You’ll either spend time, effort, and money taking care of your health when you’re young, or you’ll spend even more time, effort, and money on your health when you’re old, repairing the effects of the poor decisions, ignorance, or neglect back when you just didn’t know any better.
Who We Are
The Sage Habits team is a group of Gen X’ers and older Millennials who have figured out enough in life to know they need to learn more. We’re 80’s and 90’s kids and love to reference the culture we grew up with, so strap in for some Star Wars references and allusions to Zelda. Pokémon was just a little bit after our time, but we definitely understand the appeal.
We’ve been financially responsible and mostly healthy, but our screws-ups make for interesting stories. Basically, we’re just a few steps ahead on the Sage Journey and we’re inviting you to follow, walk beside us, or even lead if you can show us a better way.
Why Trust Us
This element of authority in modern times is tough. How can you feel confident that anyone knows what they’re talking about? We wrestled with this same question, and the answer comes in 2-3-4? parts:
- We show you how it works. If we’re explaining a concept correctly with a ton of detail and backstory, the logic will be self-evident and you’ll see why we’re advocating for a certain savings plan, an organization tip, or advice about what to eat.
- We’re bookworms and academic geeks. We love to get into the weeds and scour every detail in books, journal articles and academic studies. We’ll summarize everything and then link you right to the source so you can see exactly what we read. For the new systems we’ve invented, you’ll notice that we follow the concept of MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) to ridiculous extremes. We’ll boil the oceans on a topic just to make sure that all y’all get at least something covered. Our current advice is centered on a US audience, especially for taxes, but the general principles around behavioral finance, healthcare, growing your career and getting organized are universal.
- Use the letters, Luke. Every author will proudly showcase his or her certifications and degrees. Any random video influencer can give advice, but we’ve taken the time to actually learn this stuff, and I really hope that it shows.
- We’re not selling. The content we give is free, and maybe we’ll ask for your email address once in a while before you download the really good stuff. You’ll also see links to products we think helpful, but like any good affiliate, we don’t actually care what you buy. If we recommend a book on retirement and you buy a toothbrush or big screen TV instead, it’s all good. Please just enjoy the content and learn to make your life better. If we’ve helped you do that, you’ll tell other people and we’ll keep growing.
Where to Start
The best place to begin to understand how helpful this site will be is our article on the 4P Budget. It’s the jumping off point for a ton of finance topics, so take the next 15 minutes and dig-in.