Bartenders: wrangle your personal finances w/ 4 steps

In our last 2 newsletters we've featured advice from Shaun McGuire, a bartender extraordinaire and service industry expert who coaches bartenders on work/life balance, finances, etc. (Learn more about that part of his life on his website, philosophicallydrunk.com.)

That last point—finances—is the focus of Shaun's advice this week, specifically how bartenders, servers (and anyone else, really) can go about wrangling their finances.

In short, if it feels like you just can't get ahead of your spending, this week's interview is for you.

Here's the 4-step process Shaun recommends for getting your finances wrangled:

• Step 1: Track your spending. Write down every single thing you spend money on, no exceptions. Even if you only do this for a month, it'll be super helpful for identifying where you can/need to make adjustments. How should I track? Shaun recommends a manual approach, like a small notebook. (I prefer using a Google sheet to make totaling easier.) There are apps out there that you can tie your financial accounts into and thus automate tracking, but the good ones aren't free and sometimes don't accommodate everyone's approach to finances. Plus, manually tracking makes each purchase feel a little more visceral, and may even make you think twice about a purchase ("Damn, I don't want to have to write this down.").
• Step 2: Review your spending at the end of the month. This will take a little time, but if you set aside an hour that should be plenty. You want to come out of that hour knowing the basics: how much did you spend vs. how much did you earn? What categories do all your purchases fall into? Does anything surprise or shock you?
• Step 3: Given what you find in step 2, where do you need to make adjustments? What things do you need to make room for?
• Step 4: make a plan for making those adjustments. This will most likely mean setting a budget for yourself in particular categories. This requires a little more discussion, so...

What spending categories should I adjust?

Shaun takes two datapoints into consideration here:

1. You need to make sure your baseline expenses are covered before allotting any money to fun stuff. Those baselines are stuff like housing, food, water, electricity and, very importantly, your retirement account (retirement investment advice is coming in next week's newsletter).

2. Think about the things you love. You shouldn't have to remove that from your life, you just need to make sure you're making requisite adjustments elsewhere. For Shaun those things are eating out and traveling. He doesn't skimp on those—he's just much more disciplined about his spending in other categories in order to make sure he can live it up in those two areas.

After you consider all this, it's up to you to put the plan into action. You know how much you can spend on what stuff—now go out and make it happen!

Check out the interview for more financial advice from Shaun, and please share the video with anyone who you think could benefit from the advice (e.g. if you're an owner or manager, share it with your staff):

Oh, and here's a bonus tip: Stop buying things on Amazon every day. Decide on 1 day per week when you'll buy from Amazon. Leave everything in your cart until that day, and before you purchase everything go through the cart—do you need everything in there? Probably not.

Well this is a bummer. About a month ago we reported that Anchor would reduce distribution to just its home state of CA and that it was discontinuing it's famous Christmas Ale.

Evidently things continued to quickly deteriorate, since yesterday Anchor announced it was closing. There's still a chance that a buyer might come forward during the forthcoming liquidation process, but that seems unlikely to me.

Regardless, this is a big deal, so we thought we'd digitally "pour one out" for Anchor by providing some dates, stats, and facts about the San Francisco institution:

• 1849: German immigrant Gottlieb Brekle, who would go on to found the brewery that preceded the first Anchor iteration, arrived in San Francisco in search of CA gold.
  
• 1896: Two other German immigrants purchased Brekle's brewery and renamed it Anchor. Why? Not clear, but the port of San Francisco probably has something to do with it.
• It survived prohibition from 1920-1933. Anchor's website says that there's no official record of the brewery doing anything during that time, but admits there may have been some "activities." Wink wink, I guess.
• 1971: Anchor Steam, the brewery's flagship, was bottled for the first time.
• 2017: Japanese brewery giant Sapporo purchases Anchor.
• 2019: Anchor employees unionize, one of the first (perhaps the first) craft breweries to unionize.

We'll be sure to update this story if updates come to light, but for now get a 6-pack of Anchor Steam if you can!

• Alcohol-related deaths increased in every state over the pandemic. Mississippi saw the highest percent increase: alcohol-related deaths were 159% higher in 2021 than in 2018.
• Inflation data from June showed a 3% slowdown in the overall consumer price index, but just like last month outpaced that, coming in at 5.4% inflation for at-home consumption and 5.3% for drinking away from home
• Another outlet—this time Axios—published a story about the decline of beer festivals and what it means for breweries. (I say "another" because the Athletic published something in the same ballpark a couple weeks ago.) Next month I'm heading to the my first beer festival in years—The Great Taste of the Midwest—so I'll be interested to see if it feels different than the last time I attended (2018).