4 ‘good enough’ financial moves to reach your goals with ‘less time and hassle,’ from a money expert
When it comes to managing your finances, you may feel like you need to do the most: get the most return on your credit cards, pay as little tax as possible, get the most return on your investments, and earn the most interest on your savings.
If you feel that kind of pressure, face it honestly, says Christine Benz, Morningstar’s director of personal finance and retirement and author of:How to Retire?”
” [financial] The industry has this optimization mindset, he tells CNBC Make It. “If you’re just learning and getting faster, you’ll probably start to think that’s the only way to do this job and that if you cut corners, you’re doing it wrong.”
To be clear, if you’re someone who likes to get down to the nitty gritty of your finances and have the time to do it, that’s fine, Benz says. But for the rest of us, he says, taking a simplified approach can save time and energy to do other things while keeping us on track to meet our financial goals.
In a recent article for MorningstarBenz called this the “good enough” approach to financial management. While these aren’t moves to “maximize” your finances, consider these four strategies that he says will achieve similar results “with much less time and hassle.”
reverse budgeting
Many important financial goals, such as saving for retirement and paying off debt, depend on your ability to consistently save a portion of your income, Benz says.
“If you’re saving modestly, that eliminates the need to do a lot of other things,” he says. “Even if you make subpar decisions on investment choices, for example if the savings rate is reasonable, that still addresses a lot of things that might not be perfect in the plan.”
Simply put, investing 20% of your income in a consistently below-average portfolio will likely provide a better outcome than putting in 5% and getting above-average returns.
If you want to keep things really simple, try the strategy Benz uses: reverse budgeting. Instead of trying to trim your spending to optimize your savings rate, choose a fixed percentage of your income (Benz says 15% is a good goal) and set that money to automatically come out of each paycheck toward financial goals. The remaining money you can spend as you see fit.
index investment
In theory, someone who chooses the right investments at the right time can beat the stock market in the long run. But in practice this is really difficult to do. Consider managers of large-company U.S. stock funds whose mission is to beat the S&P 500. In the decade ending June 2025, only 8% of these mutual funds survived and rose above the benchmark. According to Morningstar.
That’s why Benz recommends creating a core portfolio of index funds that come with low fees and simply track the performance of market indexes rather than trying to beat them.
“A lot of data points to index funds being really great choices and not being interfered with,” he says. “They can give you access to many different parts of the stock and bond market with a single holding.”
“In my opinion, index funds are the perfect intersection of optimization and a ‘good enough’ portfolio.”
Simplifying financial relationships
No one wants to put their money into an account that offers almost no interest. But Benz says you don’t need to move your money to find a tenth of a percentage point.
“The idea of people going around trying to get the best cash machine drives me crazy,” he says. “The best way to turn things in your favor is to work with a low-cost provider that will deliver consistently competitive returns.”
In the brokerage context, this might mean comparing what you’ll get from so-called “sweep accounts” (where your money sits in your brokerage account when not invested), he says.
For Benz says it’s important to remember that rates on high-yield savings accounts fluctuate. Sticking with a bank you like will probably be less of a headache. pays a generous fee Instead of ping-ponging between online banks offering the highest rate of the year.
And if that bank or brokerage also offers credit cards with rewards you like, even better, he says. When it’s time for you or someone else to handle your money, having more of it under one roof makes things more manageable.
“Reducing the number of financial relationships is such good practice that it doesn’t mean you want to be completely lazy,” he says. “But if you can try to reduce the number of entities you need to contact, that’s all good.”
Using a consultant
Benz thinks and writes about finance for a living. He published a book about retirement. Still, Benz and her husband had some help when it came to managing money and planning for their own retirement. financial planner.
Doing this allows Benz to have an optimized financial plan; it just lets someone else help with all the tweaking.
“He calibrated everything, and it gives me a lot of peace of mind knowing that someone else did that optimization and used some pretty powerful tools to do it,” Benz says.
That doesn’t mean Benz, you, or anyone else can’t figure this out on their own. But delegating some of the heavy lifting to others can help you focus on the things you really want to spend time and energy on. Benz favors fee-only schedulers, which may charge an hourly rate, bill you for certain services, or charge a fee similar to a monthly or annual subscription fee. The important thing is that they don’t get paid to sell you certain financial products, which could create a conflict of interest, Benz says.
For Benz, working with a professional was worth the expense.
“I felt a little flash, like, ‘Oh, I have to do this on my own,'” he says. “But ultimately, I decided it was a good value proposition, going to someone who had the tools to find some really good answers that I didn’t necessarily have.”
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