Hello, it's Chelsea from The Financial Diet.

And I want to talk to you really quickly about our amazing, exciting, incredible, influential, iconic, unbeatable Studio at TFD, a.k.a. our events department. Right now, they're all digital, although, hopefully soon, they'll be coming back to a live space near you.

But every month, The Studio at TFD produces several amazing, interactive, live events. And we have all of our events and more at thefinancialdiet.com/studio. Hey, guys.

It's Chelsea from The Financial Diet, and this week's video is sponsored by Acorns. And I am here in my holiday, red-lip best, with my cozy sweater, snow gently falling outside, seasonal candles lit, to remind you, before we get into all this good stuff, to hit that Subscribe button, if you haven't already, to join and become a member if you want to up your game, because we have so many amazing things to offer our members. It's a secret society, it's kind of a thing, it's very cool, it's what all the cool kids are doing, and go to thefinancialdiet.com/studio to see all of our amazing upcoming events and classes.

TFD loves you, I love you, it's time to love us back. And today, we're talking about one of my favorite subjects, which is those little tasks that you know you need to be doing, that you've had on your calendar to-do list forever, and just keep bumping it back and back and back. And then, when you finally do that thing, you're like, holy shit, not only did that really improve my life in a meaningful way, but it also took literally 10 minutes.

And I think there is nowhere in life that this is more true than with your finances. When I first got good with money, the first thing that I learned was that so much of the battle was simply overcoming your own laziness. Half of the battle, maybe even like 75% to 80% of the battle, is just getting over your own feeling of I don't want to, and actually doing the thing.

But the good news about a lot of financial stuff, is that you can automate them, so once they're set up, you never have to do anything again. You just have to check in every now and then to make sure that it's working. The even better news is that life is full of these little tasks that you've probably been putting off, but which would take you max 10 minutes to accomplish, and would change your life.

So let's jump right into them, with nine of these mini tasks that change everything. Number one is start a career mastermind group. When it comes to career, it sounds like a cliche at this point-- but cliches often become cliches because they're true-- it's much more about who you know than what you know.

Creating networks of people who are similarly minded, who are in a similar industry or space, who are not necessarily limited by who might happen to be in your company, or even your immediate area, is one of the best ways to advance not only your personal development within your career, but your overall career development itself. Everything, from the process of skill developing, to negotiating, to just bouncing ideas off of other people in your career mastermind, can give you an added edge when it comes to nearly every element of your career navigation. And this can be especially important when it comes to actually changing jobs.

In fact, one LinkedIn study found that 70% of people in 2016 were hired at companies where they already knew someone. And, as TFD's very own creative Director Holly Trantham put it, "I have a group of friends who regularly meet to discuss their major career and money goals, and steps they're taking to reach them. They leave each meeting with an assignment to complete by the next one, such as setting an important meeting, or prepping for a performance review.

One of them has made a big career change that took her across the country since they started, and another used help from the group to get a promotion and a major raise." So take the initiative and take 10 minutes to find a small group of people with whom you'd like to start a mastermind. It can be a mix of people that you know from your personal life, from your professional life, or even people that you know a little bit online, but mostly just admire from afar. And from there, your group can meet on Zoom, when it's epidemiologically safe again, in person, or even just on a group text or Whatsapp.

And here are just a few basic rules for starting your own career mastermind, based on an article by journalist/friend of TFD, Kristen Wong, called "Why Your Career Needs a Mastermind Group." Number one, keep it small, no more than six people. You want to make sure you know, or get to know, each other as people first, which is difficult in a larger group. Number two, set your rules up front.

Determine who is taking minutes, who is scheduling, how often you're meeting, what to do if someone has to cancel, et cetera. Number three, select people you trust. Even if they're not your best friends, you'll want to feel safe being honest and vulnerable sharing your career struggles and goals with the group.

The right career mastermind group is small, but mighty. Number two is to start investing, even if you are a super cautious person. As the saying goes, the best way to start investing was yesterday, the second best day is today.

And if you're a super cautious person, you may have always been inclined to keep your money in places like a high-yield savings account, rather than investments. But especially for longer term goals, like retirement, keeping your money in an investment account can represent thousands upon thousands in additional value, simply by letting time work its magic through compound interest. In fact, if you put $1,000 into a high-yield savings account that earns 1% interest, in 20 years, you would have just about $1,220.

But the same $1,000 invested and earning 7% average interest, compounded monthly, would grow to be over $4,030 within 20 years, and that is with no other investment contributions. So even if you don't have a ton of extra cash lying around, you can get started and get over that hump into investing with an app like Acorns. Acorns automatically invests spare change from your everyday purchases, such as holiday gifts, gas, groceries, and more.

The process is essentially effortless on your part, but you also don't have to worry about getting the most out of your investments. Acorns diversified portfolios are designed by experts to help you maximize growth potential, and weather market ups and downs, zero expertise or experience required. So don't wait, click the link in our description, or visit Acorns.com/TFD to get a $5 bonus investment when you sign up for Acorns and take control of your future.

Get started in just five minutes, and unlock investing, saving, retirement, checking, earning, and more. Number three is start a daily meditation practice. So, yes, it sounds a little bit, woo-woo, crystal, Marianne Wilson energy, but mindfulness meditation has been proven to have actual demonstrable, and pretty impactful, health benefits.

There are a handful of key areas, including depression, chronic pain, and anxiety, in which well-designed, well-run studies have shown benefits for patients engaging in a mindfulness meditation program, with effects similar to other existing treatments. Other studies have shown meditation to be helpful in curbing things like the desire to smoke, or to lower blood pressure. And what's perhaps most appealing, is that mindfulness experts have long since debunked the long standing misconception that in order to be effective, meditation has to be something you do a ton.

In fact, just 5 to 10 minutes daily of these meditative practices can start to show some of those aforementioned health benefits. We'll link you to a resource that shows you how to get involved with beginner meditation, even for those of us who might have a little bit of trouble staying still or calming our mind. And if you want to go even deeper on the practice, please join myself, as well as YouTuber and therapist Kati Morton, mindfulness expert and NYU professor, Melissa Carter, and a special Enneagram expert, for our Mindfulness and Money Retreat on January 3.

We'll be learning all about these topics and tons, tons more, and actually going step-by-step, in real time, through some of these practices so you can employ them at home. Number four is to volunteer with, or just get involved in, your community. Now, obviously, on an ethical level, we all pretty much acknowledge that doing something to help those around us is generally the good thing to be doing.

But on a more selfish level, being involved with charitable organizations, volunteering, donating time, getting involved with your community, et cetera, have been highly demonstrated to improve our overall feelings of happiness, satisfaction, closeness, et cetera. I personally am involved in one neighborhood action committee for my own neighborhood. Obviously, right now, all of our actions are taking place via Zoom meetings and email, but it still feels really powerful not just to be involved with what's happening on the streets of Morningside Heights-- I don't know where that song came from-- but also to feel like I have a more intimate understanding of the place around me.

Rather than just passing by a construction site and being like, what's going on there? I guess I'll find out in nine months or so. I now know, oh, that's that public school that they demolished and are now building a shopping complex.

I'm very upset about that, this is bad for my community, let's get involved. But often, the thing that stops us from getting involved with our communities, is just a feeling of not knowing where to start. So one of the easiest places I recommend, is to go to your town or city's website, and look specifically for a calendar of community events.

It's almost inevitable that some of these events will be community organizations who are involved in advocacy, zoning, beautification, charitable organizations within the community, or any number of sub-interest groups you might have. Basically, even for those of us like myself who've never seen Parks and Rec, it's important to be aware that your local government is probably a treasure trove of various activities, freebies, community organizations, and various things to get involved with, whenever you decide to take the 10 minutes to look it up and join. Number five is doing a daily retinol routine.

Now listen, before the skincare hive comes for me-- the very scariest fandom after the K-Pop fandom-- I would say that retinols are not going to be for everyone. So we can amend the title of this to be embrace a skin care routine that is based on your needs, but can actually get shit done. But I'm going to speak now personally to my journey on the retinol train, and you guys can substitute in whatever would be your modification for your skin care routine that is more adapted to your needs.

For years, I avoided retinol because, as someone who tends toward a very dry, flaky skin that is very easily irritated, I assumed that there was just no such thing as a retinol routine that would be adapted to my needs, that they would all needlessly dry me out and make me even more sensitive to the sun, which I already am. But I thought, hey, it's 2020, it's the winter, no one's ever seeing me again, so why not go ahead and just go YOLO with my skin. So, as of about three weeks ago, I started an everyday retinol routine that I am quite religious about.

I cleanse, and then, afterwards, I slather my face and neck in a retinol cream that I found that was particularly adapted to people with drier, more sensitive skin. I am using the Amarte Wonder Cream-- and actually, going back to K-Pop, this is actually a Korean beauty brand, so fun-- just so many good things coming out of South Korea, let's put it that way. And after that, I follow it up with my normal moisturizer, which is the Tatcha Dewy Skin Cream, and I just frickin'-- I just slather that shit on, baby-- within reason, it's expensive.

But I will say, that after only three weeks-- and I just am now coming out of the purge time of the retinol routine-- I really do feel very differently about my skin every morning when I look in the mirror. I'm wearing makeup now because I'm filming, but even without it, I feel way more confident, which has been a boon in a time when skin care, between wearing a mask all the time, barely getting outside, being in dry, hot-ass apartments all the time, the sun setting at 3:00 PM, is a welcome change. And to take it more broadly, we often think of things about our bodies, such as the way our skin might be, as a complete given, it's just what we're born with, and there's really nothing we can do.

But taking the time to actually research what would be the treatments that work for you, and committing yourself to attempting at least one month of following a routine that is adapted to your issues, gives you at least the idea of whether or not this sort of thing is treatable. For me and my skin issues, it feels like retinol has so far been a bit of a magic bullet, and I'm excited to see where it continues to go. But whatever your issues might be, coming up with just that 10 minute routine you can commit to every day can change immensely how you feel about that part of your body.

Number six is to get a posture correcting tool that you wear every day. I would like to shout out that as I said that point, Holly, who's filming me, went whoop! But, to be fair, when I am not filming these videos and have to sit like I'm a corpse being posed for an elaborate funeral service, I usually do have very bad posture, too, and it is bad for your bod.

And, yes, of course, having good confident posture is important for self-esteem, but it's also very important for more elements of your health than you probably realize. Here are just a few negative effects of bad posture-- misaligning your musculoskeletal system, wearing away at your spine, making it more fragile and prone to injury, causing neck, shoulder, and back pain, decreasing your flexibility, affecting how well your joints move, affecting your balance and increasing your risk of falling, making it harder to digest your food, and making it harder to breathe. So staying active and practicing various exercises that specifically help with posture and alignment, like Pilates, are really great places to start.

But if you, like many of us, work at a desk every day, where you tend to be like late-stage Beethoven at the piano, you might want to invest in a posture tool. These often cost around $10 to $20, and don't need to be worn for that long throughout the day to have massive effects. Here's an example of one.

Number seven is get a proper blood test. Now I know what you're saying, guys. Chelsea, it's 2020, we've been poked and prodded and Q-tipped within an inch of our lives, we're not trying to see the doctor more often than we have to.

But you should. Preventative health care is, unfortunately, for many still, a bit of a luxury, although it is arguably the most crucial element of our health care process. In a University of Chicago study, 40% of Americans have skipped a recommended medical test or procedure, often due to cost.

And this is all the more upsetting, because those routine procedures can often flag issues that you may not be aware of, but could be affecting so many elements of your day-to-day life. For example, some of these routine tests could tell you that you are massively deficient in something, which could be having tons of ripple effects on everything from your digestion to your mood. You may also be constantly eating something without realizing you're slightly allergic to it.

Or, I guess you could be like those lactose-intolerant people who truly do not give a damn, they just pop a 'taid and go about their day. But blood tests in particular can be incredibly useful, in this regard. Blood tests help doctors check for certain diseases and conditions.

They also help check the function of your organs, and show how well any treatments are working. Specifically, blood tests can help doctors evaluate how well organs such as kidneys, liver, thyroid, and heart are working, diagnose diseases and conditions such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, diabetes, anemia, and coronary heart disease, find out whether you have risk factors for heart disease, check whether the medicines you're taking are working, or assess how well your blood is clotting. You should be getting a routine blood test at least once a year, and this should be covered through your insurance, although costs can widely, and they often do not tell you up front.

So take these 10 minutes to call your physician, schedule an appointment, and find out all of the cost details up front. Number eight is to put a restricting app to limit the time you spend on things like social media, or even just looking at your screens. Across the globe, internet users spend an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes a day on social media.

For me, there are days when that's probably 23.5. And it is well known at this point that increased social media use can have super negative effects for things like anxiety and stress. And according to a study from the University of Glasgow, social media use can negatively impact sleep patterns, particularly in young people.

Teenagers who are very high social media users, five hours or more per day, were around 70% more likely than average users, one to three hours, to fall asleep late on school nights, and after midnight on other days. So take a few minutes to download apps like OFFTIME or Your Slice, which block certain apps for a period of time. Another option is to take the time to just disable push notifications from basically everything.

You can even go one step further and manually log yourself out after every single session of these various apps and not save your passwords so you have to log back in manually. Maybe some combination of all, or even just one, of these strategies, implemented regularly, can seriously change the way you interact with your tech, and your own brain. Lastly, number nine is to sign up with any kind of pet adoption service, if only for alerts.

Now listen, my husband, for the first five or so years we were together, was always like, I cannot emotionally connect with a small dog, they are not real animals. And, low and behold, we are now 10 years into our relationship, we have a nine pound, angel, cotton ball, beautiful, magnificent, queen named Mona, and that man loves her more than any one being has ever loved another being, in the history of this planet. He loves that dog, and that dog has transformed the man's life.

And not for nothing, but I'm alone most of the time now while he's back in France, and if I did not have my tiny, nine pound angel to cuddle me 24 hours a day, and just be so frickin' jazzed that I am around all the time for reasons she can't understand right now, I don't know what I'd be doing. I'd be losing my mind. But even if you can't take the leap to actually adopting an animal, just getting more and more of them in your world orbit, and, possibly, finding other ways to interact with them, help them, et cetera, is a great way to go.

Owning a pet has been demonstrated to improve overall happiness, and physical fitness, as for many pet owners, especially dog owners like myself, it requires you to get your ass out of the house regularly, even on days when you don't want to. If you do finally want to get started looking at pet options, just take a few minutes to sign up for alerts from your local adoption network, or rescue service. Most have a regular newsletter that you can sign up for.

And remember, adopt don't shop. Over seven million companion animals enter shelters each year, and millions of them are needlessly euthanized. Listen.

It's time to shame you, puppy mill, breeder-dog-having so and so's, that are for some reason subscribing to this channel, you're not welcome. Well, maybe-- OK, fine. Listen, what is done is done, you made a mistake.

But now, going forward, you adopt. And plus, from the financial angle, adopting is way more affordable than buying a dog from a breeder. Anyway, guys, so many things you can do to improve your life, your health, your posture, your screen time, your animal companion having level, and all of these things can be done in a simple 10 minutes or less.

And if one of the things you want to be doing is getting started on investing in a way that is totally painless and accessible, check out Acorns at the link in our description to learn more. And, as always, guys, thank you for watching, and do not forget to hit the Subscribe and Join button, and to come back every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday for new and awesome videos. Ciao.