My 31-Day Screentime Challenge: Week 4 Updates

^{January 27, 2025}

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By Holly Trantham

I am almost done with my January phone use challenge, and I want to start off with my most positive update: I’m happy to report that last week’s average time spent on Instagram was 1 hour and 3 minutes a day, down from 1 hour and 21 minutes the previous week! (If you’re new here, catch up here, here, here and here!)

I am actually a little surprised by this — we flew to visit family for a quick 48 hours this weekend to celebrate my nephew’s first birthday and his soon-to-be-brother’s impending arrival earthside. Idle waiting time at airports/on airplanes tends to lend itself to even more scrolling time loss than my typical day-to-day, because there always feels like there is nothing else to do. But this trip was different, mainly thanks to my yoga teacher training: I have reading and a homework assignment to complete by this weekend, and the airport and plane was an easy enough place to get ahead on it. 

I also made the (fortunate?) mistake of deleting TikTok last week during the few-hour window that U.S. service went down, and now I’m not able to re-download it (which is apparently so upsetting to some people that there is now a cottage industry of people selling old iPhones with TikTok pre-downloaded for laughable sums of money). I still have to scroll TikTok on my desktop for work purposes, but I’m pleasantly surprised to see that my Instagram scrolling didn’t go up with the deletion of my other default mindless app. 

One reason I’m not surprised at lowering my phone use this week is because I had a lot of commitments! I signed myself up for embroidering a sweater for my nephew as well as baking the cakes for his birthday and my sister-in-law’s baby shower, so I had a lot more of my typically “free” time taken up by other things (specifically things I enjoy doing, of course). I did end up skipping two days of yoga — I always plan to do some exercise when visiting family, but it almost never happens, especially on short trips. I would love to find ways to work around that in the future, but since we are always the ones visiting from the furthest away/are subject to the timeline of whoever is driving us around, it just does not stick as a priority. Since being around family these days meant my overall phone use was way down, for the purpose of this challenge, I’m still totally fine with that. 

Here’s my little Instagram story update for this week:

You’ll note that I also was successful finishing another book this week! This was an audiobook I listened to while completing my various crafts and cleaning my apartment (I actually started it a few months ago, then my Libby app loan lapsed, and I finally got it back). It was We Love The Nightlife by Rachel Koller Croft. I absolutely loved her first book, Stone Cold Fox — this one didn’t quite live up to that knockout debut, but it was still plenty engrossing, and I loved the vibes. 

So far, the majority of this challenge feels like it has been a success, even if I have missed a few days of my daily habits. I’m excited to share my final update and reflections with you all next week!

Welcome to our weekly series, Ask A Financial Advisor with Kellen Thayer of ​Advisor.com​! Dozens of members of the TFD community love and trust Advisor to help them on financial journeys. Get $500 off your first year with Advisor by signing up through TFD! ​Click here​ to take our short quiz and schedule a FREE consultation call with Advisor today and never make another financial decision alone!

Q: What should my portfolio net worth be as a 32-year-old with a full-time job and salary?

A: There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but a reasonable benchmark would be to have saved the equivalent of 1x your annual salary by age 30. By 32, you should ideally be working toward 1.5x your salary. This figure includes all your savings and investments, such as 401(k)s, IRAs, brokerage accounts, and even cash savings.

If you’re behind, don’t panic—it’s never too late to catch up. Focus on increasing your savings rate. Aim to contribute 15% of your income to retirement accounts, including employer matches. Diversify your investments in a mix of stocks, bonds, and ETFs, with an eye on long-term growth.

Use tools like retirement calculators to stay on track and revisit your goals annually to adjust as needed. Remember, consistency matters more than perfection—just keep contributing regularly.

Get $500 off your first year with Advisor by signing up through TFD! ​Click here​ to take our short quiz and schedule a FREE consultation call with Advisor today and never make another financial decision alone!

Advisor.com provides clients with a top notch advising team for a fixed, flat annual fee. Their team of advisors work for you, not commissions, and help you to achieve your smart financial goals through planning, investing, and more.

About Kellen Thayer

Kellen has dedicated his career to helping clients achieve their financial goals through comprehensive financial planning and wealth management. He holds an MBA with a concentration in Finance from the University of Pittsburgh. Before joining Advisor Wealth Management, Kellen worked as an investment advisor at Goldman Sachs partnering with clients with $25mm plus in investable assets and later advised high-net-worth clients at Raymond James. His expertise spans a wide range of financial strategies, always with a focus on empowering clients from all backgrounds to build and sustain their wealth.

If you're in the market for a new gentle facial cleanser, I recently purchased the CosRX Foam Cleanser and it works wonders! It foams very well upon use and leaves behind a very hydrating and soft finish, which is truly a godsend to keep my dry skin at bay during the wintertime. 

My drink of the season this January (good both hot and iced) is an earl-grey matcha latte! See below for how I make the earl-grey syrup if you're interested!

— 1 cup of sugar

— 1 cup of water

— soak 2-3 earl grey tea bags for about 8-10 minutes on low heat!

— once sugar is melted and cooled, you can add in 1 tsp of vanilla bean extract or paste

For the latte you can layer ice + syrup + your milk of choice and top it off with your matcha! You can also store your syrup in the fridge to keep it fresh.

I'm absolutely flying through The Goodbye Process by Mary Jones, a beautiful collection of short stories that illuminate the process of grief and the many ways we say goodbye throughout our lives: death, youth, and relationships. A touching must-read so far for those like me who are still figuring out the meaning of what it means to truly let go.

🚨FREE WORKSHOP ALERT! Join Chelsea & our friends from Advisor.com on February 19th for The FIREside Chat. This mini masterclass will be a deep dive into what it really means to achieve financial independence (whether or not you plan to retire early). Chelsea & a financial advisor will share all the tools you need to reach financial freedom. This class will contain a 60-minute lesson followed by a 30-minute live Q&A all around the tangible steps towards financial independence. Click here to take our super short quiz and register.

📚Join Holly TONIGHT for our first ​book club​ of the year! Happening on January 27th, our book club will be discussing Feel Good Finance by Aja Evans, and Aja will join us for a very special author Q&A! Join The Society at our $2.99 or up tiers for access!

✨Make sure to get your hands on our latest guidebook, ​The January Vibe Check​! This is a 16-page guidebook dedicated to helping you reflect on your goals from last year, plot your 2025 goals with intention, tune up your finances, and think about how you want your life to look different in 12 months from now. Exclusively available for members of The Society Premium.

📚Don't miss out! We’re still offering exclusive access to an entirely new bonus chapter for those who have purchased our latest book, ​Beyond Getting By​. With the start of a new year, we know how much you all are reevaluating how you spend your money and time. Beyond Getting By is the perfect companion for retooling your relationship with money, your career, and your life in general, complete with dozens of pages of beautifully designed interactive exercises. In order to get access to “‘Working To Live’ In The Face Of Layoff Culture,” please share your proof of purchase with us by filling out ​this very short form​ — once you fill out the form, the bonus chapter will be automatically emailed to you.

🎥 Our January video essay is dropping TOMORROW! This month we’re discussing Tipping Culture in America. Join us on YouTube in the live chat during the premiere at 8pm ET and a reminder that $4.99 and up members of the ​Society at TFD​ get an ad-free extended version!

By Chelsea Fagan

Each week, our $9.99 Society members get access to Chelsea’s premium newsletter, with her thoughts on everything from Taylor Swift to Trump. Read on for an excerpt from the latest edition, and be sure to join The Society Premium for instant access to this newsletter and our entire backlog!

A lot of this era is going to be about distraction, about theater, about keeping us constantly focused on semantics so we're too tired to fight back on real issues. And honestly, American politics have been this way for a long time, on both sides of the aisle: they keep us constantly divided and fighting over distractions, so we're never able to form a united front along class lines.

If we're obsessing over social media arguments or culture war nonsense, we forget that most Americans agree on issues of wealth inequality, or healthcare reform, or raising the minimum wage. 

To read this newsletter in its entirety, click here!

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