Wrangle your personal finances

Shaun McGuire has been in the industry for decades, with most of those years spent behind the bar.

You might not think of career bartenders as folks who have their finances locked down and are on the track to an early retirement. But that's Shaun's trajectory.

So how do you get there? Here's the 4-step process Shaun recommends for getting your finances wrangled:

• Step 1: Track all of your spending for at least a month. Really track it. Don't ballpark it. If making a purchase means you have to write or type something, it feels more visceral, letting you truly get a feel for how much you spend. It's surprising to know how much money flows out and how easily it does so.
• Step 2: Review your spending at the end of the month. Answer the obvious questions—like how much you spent vs. how much you earned and what categories your purchases fall into—but also stop to think: does anything surprise or shock you?
• Step 3: Where do you need to make adjustments? Was there anything from Step 2 that shocked you? Where should you cut back? What do you need to make room for?
• Step 4: Make a plan for going forward. You'll have the most success with this if you set yourself budgets in particular categories.

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):

❓ Why is it worth it?

Because if it’s not listed on the menu, customers won’t know to order it, and it won’t sell.

Even if your servers are ready to answer the question (which, honestly, often isn't the case), many customers just don’t want to have to ask. Instead, they’ll just order something else that they know is available, or maybe nothing at all.

❓ How can I do it at my business?

For starters, anything is better than nothing here. If all you can muster is just a half sheet of paper with your rotating beers listed on it, that's still much better than "ask your server."

If you'd like to up the design a bit, you could of course do something manual—create an editable menu template in Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or Excel. And once you have your template designed, just edit it whenever you get a new beer in and print it out.

• How should we handle food delivery apps? Some restaurant owners in Seattle have struggled in the months since a new law required that all orders through food delivery apps include an additional $5 service fee. It was always going to be tough to find a great solution given the long roster of stakeholders in this conversation—restaurants, delivery drivers, government, the food delivery apps, etc. But it feels like we could get to a more nuanced solution than a flat fee.
• Should kids be able to buy NAs? NPR took a look at the thus-far unregulated market, with input from researchers, NA bev folks, and more.
• Wisconsin loves beer. Obviously. But it's not just an assumption—the data backs it up.