Blue & White Finance

All my budgeting rules of thumb in one post: 👉 Rent/Mortgage payment <= 30% of net household income 👉 Adding children - budget will increase by 3000-5000 per child. 👉 Groceries - 800-1200 ₪ per person per month 👉 Take-home pay from a raise: 15,000-30,000 ₪ range => Take home 45-50% 30,000 ₪+ => Take home 35-40% 👉 Max. budget for bank fees and credit card fees - 0 ₪ 👉 Mortgage payment - 5,500 ₪ /month for every 1M ₪ (30 year mortgage) 👉 All-in cost for a 2nd-hand family car - ~2,500 ₪ /month 👉 Life insurance costs (monthly premium) per million shekel: Age 30: 30-40 ₪ Age 40: 50-70 ₪ Age 50: 120-150 ₪ Age 60: 300-400 ₪ 👉 Emergency fund - 2-4 months of expenses 👉 There are 4.3 weeks in a month, not 4 👉 Every shekel saved today can grow 10x in 30 years Valuable? Save for later or share to your network.

I love checking in with and hearing from past clients. This week: One client updated that over the past 12 months he fully implemented the plan we put in place and has bought an apartment on paper - to be ready next year. Another decided to sell significant holdings of employee equity and has been steadily transferring the proceeds to a Keren Kaspit, preparing for the purchase of a property. And a third called me for advice as his 16 year old son just received his first job and wants to know what to do with the money. I'll be guiding them through the process of opening a brokerage account for a teenager. Families let me into their lives for a few months. Little do they know that I never want to leave.

Have you ever seen the cashflow of a typical young Oleh family? There is so much to learn from one chart. Here are 4 things that stood out to me: 1) So much of our long term savings are in the form of Pension and Keren Hishtalmut 2) Long-term and short-term savings look small in the context of all the money flowing around (but protecting them is key to financial success) 3) Taxes start becoming expensive from around 25,000 ILS 4) Fixed expenses such as housing, education, car, and insurance take up so much of the budget What jumps out at you?

It could take Aaron and me slightly longer to get back to you this week. But don't worry. We arranged for our sons to be born on the same day (18.2.24) so that we can avoid multiple interruptions to our business. Thanks to our wives for such precise coordination on behalf of Blue & White Finance.

While we've now worked with hundreds of clients and students, this is how we originally went from 0 to 1 in our first year.

Reuven Shirazi has done some fantastic work in the Israeli personal finance space. We were lucky enough to have him on the show to share his profound insights and unique approach to some of the most important issues we encounter daily serving Olim.

No matter what is going on in this country there seems to always be more people interested in investing in Israeli real estate. In this new episode of Aliyah Money Talks, I am joined by Hillel Davis of Trusted House to take a real hard look at what it takes to make a successful real estate investment in Israel. 

Here's a story about somebody who succeeded despite all the odds. Uri reached out to me in December 2022. Uri had built up half a million shekels in the bank. Lazy money that was doing nothing for him. And Uri knew it. He'd known it for a long time. But he was terrified of investing. His money was in different currencies and he didn't know how to start thinking about risk. He was paralyzed. It took Uri a while to build up to it, but in September 2023 he decided to work with me. When it comes to investing, Aaron and I teach, guide, and coach. We don't manage money and we don't give specific investment advice. So Uri learned the fundamentals. Which account to open. How to build a simple strategy. How to choose low-cost, diversified, passive funds. How to comes to terms with risk and how to manage (=ignore) crashes. And how to build a financial plan around his assets. Uri began investing. A small amount at the time. Getting used to the mechanics. Adding bit by bit. He also opened a Keren Kaspit for his emergency fund and short-term goals. Since then Uri has been in touch with questions and clarifications. My job is to make sure he doesn't get stuck. Then this morning he asked for my address to send me something small. To say thank you for helping him conquer a fear. To say thank you for helping him set up a different future for his children. (Eliana Ellinson, the cookies and cream is gone, but you get your pick of the rest.)

A few weeks ago I received a 250 ₪ yearly discount on my electricity bill. And I wanted to help you all do the same. So I wrote a guide on how to switch electricity providers and receive the discount. But then I realized that there are multiple providers, each with multiple confusing plans. For example, which of the following would you choose? ⚡15% discount but only from 7am to 5pm and only from Sunday to Thursday and only if you whisper sweet words to your electricity meter at 10:01pm before you go to sleep. ⚡Or a fixed 6% discount at all times. Who knows? 🤷 So I also created a calculator that reads your personal usage trends and tells you which plan to pick. How much do you have to pay for this guide and calculator? Just whisper sweet words below and I'll message you the link. Don't forget to share this post so that your friends can benefit. My goal is to have 1000 people switch, clawing back 250,000 ₪ as a group. (Oh, and if you learned anything about my family from my electricity usage trends, share it with the class.)

In normal times procrastinating difficult tasks like this are easy. But these are not normal times. Over the last 3 months, we have seen a real increase in questions about writing Wills and planning for end of life decisions. So we decided to bring on an expert, Miriam Shatsky, to help you understand the essentials of Will writing in Israel.