Is $2M Enough to Retire at 40? | Making a Millionaire

Emily and Kenji grew up with very little and now (at 34 and 36) they’ve built a $2M net worth and a plan to be work-optional by 40. We pressure-test their CoastFIRE math, reveal why a $1M taxable bridge can still come up short, and show how solo 401(k)s, backdoor Roth conversions, and a small savings re-mix help them reach their goals. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jump start your journey with our FREE financial resources⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Reach your goals faster with our products⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Take the relationship to the next level: become a client⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe on YouTube for early access and go beyond the podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Connect with us on social media for more content⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Bring confidence to your wealth building with simplified strategies from The Money Guy. Learn how to apply financial tactics that go beyond common sense and help you reach your money goals faster. Make your assets do the heavy lifting so you can quit worrying and start living a more fulfilled life. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠NordVPN.com/MONEYGUY⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 0:59Speaker 02

  You guys have done the hard work. From poverty, from food stamps, till now, you've made the hard decisions that put you in the driver's seat where you do get to pick and choose what your future looks like. You just have to make sure you finish the drill well. Don't exit too early without making sure that you have a plan that will actually get you to that great, big, beautiful tomorrow that you want.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  Today, we're here with Emily and Kenji. They're 34 and 36, and they have a $2 million net worth. What brings you guys in today?

• 1:34Speaker 03

  Well, we have this crazy idea of reaching financial independence around the age of 40.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  That's five years from now. Four for me. Oh, that's four years from now.

• 1:43Speaker 03

  It's pretty close. We need help with planning the next 40 to 50 plus years of our life, which is no small task. We've done our best to get us in a good place and invest a lot, but now we need the experts. We need the help to see if we actually can retire early, or if we're just kind of out in crazy land.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 2:02Brian Preston?

  What's the why for Y40?

• 2:04Speaker 03

  We would like the option to be able to work as little or as much as we want at that age. I personally got really burnt out by corporate when I was younger and I don't want to have to go back to a nine to five job. I never want to feel that pressure to go back.

• 2:16Speaker 05

  For me, it was just like I had this kind of dreamy idea. First it was when I was in my twenties, so I'll retire when I'm thirty. And then you're thirty and you're like, oh. Maybe I'll do it when I'm forty or something. But then, but then actually in our, in our thirties, you know, it started to be, well, actually, maybe we could kind of do that. And I have zero financial literacy. So she, she takes, she takes the, the, the full charge when it comes to that thing. And I, you know, I trust her fully and she, she's like, you know, we may, maybe we can actually do this. Uh, if, if we, if we set things upright, if, you know, we plan it out. And I'm just like, okay, let's, let's try it. Let's see if this works.

• 2:52Brian Preston?

  What are you all coming from? Like what you mentioned burnout from corporations. So what, what do you do and what was, you know, give us some background.

• 2:59Speaker 03

  I worked in social media marketing for over 10 years. And I mean, by trade, I'm actually an esthetician, but I didn't go into that line of work. The, the marketing route was definitely more lucrative for me. And I hit a point of burnout where we were trying to have a family. We were having trouble. I was physically and emotionally, just I couldn't keep up with the corporate demand. And so I ended up quitting. And, you know, we had planned for that and said, okay, like, let's get you to quit. And fortunately after that, maybe it was coincidence, but we were able to start our family. And I was like, you know, I, I don't really want to have to go back now. Like I like being around with my son. Yeah, like I want more time and like more freedom. And I grew up in poverty too. So I, I very much came from nothing.

• 3:44Speaker 03

  Um, food banks and, and food stamps and I, I mean, I only have a high school or I have a GED. So, you know, the stats were definitely against me for sure.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  We're gonna second look at your net worth and that right there is just an amazing thing. I want to hear vocationally what you do, but I want to hold on to that nugget because what an amazing, this is where I started, this is how my journey started. It is not where it is ending and I think that's awesome.

• 4:08Speaker 05

  For me, I went to college, I wanted to be Indiana Jones. I studied anthropology.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  They have degrees for that?

• 4:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  I missed out.

• 4:19Speaker 05

  No, that's the pipe dream of course. After graduating, moved back in with my parents and started looking for like random jobs. I actually was like a teacher at the YMCA for a little bit. And then my friend, he's like, hey, do you want to move in with me? I just got my own house and I'm like, yeah, I want to get out of my parents' place. You know, I'm just out of college, I want to do my own thing. He got me a job, he was working at a grocery store. And so I started doing night crew there.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Is that like stocking shelves?

• 4:45Speaker 05

  Exactly, night crew. So it was like 11:00 PM to 7:30 AM. Goodness gracious. Yeah, and during this time though, because I had moved out, I was like, you know what? I kind of want to start doing this thing called streaming. You know, I had watched people online before, you can watch people like play video games and do stuff like that. I had seen people do it and I'm like, I think I can do that a little bit better than they can. Or, you know, I can do it in a different way. So concurrently while working at the night crew shift, you know, I would get home, sleep for a few hours, then I would turn on my stream. I would stream myself playing games. Eventually, that started making more money than the night crew thing. Nice. At a certain point, I'm like, okay, you know what? I'm just gonna stop working in grocery and I'm gonna commit to this thing full time. And so I started a challenge where I streamed every day for a year straight.

• 5:30Speaker 05

  What year are we talking about here? When did this all start? Let's see, I've been doing it full time for like 13 years. Wow. Yeah, so it must have been what, 2012, 2013 when I did the full? What's considered OG in that marketplace? That is basically OG.

• 5:46Speaker 05

  Do you know Twitch TV? That's the big streaming service. Twitch had like basically just started coming out when I started streaming. So I attribute a lot of it to luck getting in on like the ground floor.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  Just the very beginning.

• 6:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, when there weren't many people doing it. So as a result, you know, if people wanted to watch something, well.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  They had no option.

• 6:06Speaker 05

  It was like.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  One whole lot of choices.

• 6:08Speaker 05

  Exactly, when, you know, when TV first came out, there's only three channels. Well, if I'm one of the channels, then you kind of have to watch me. Yeah, and then I've just been doing that ever since, so.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  So that's the vocation that you'd like to step away from at 40?

• 6:18Speaker 05

  I don't know if I necessarily want to get out of it, but it would be nice to just, you know, put it down. I'm getting older, you know, I'm not, I can't keep up with the kids these days. That type of thing. So I would be able to like to step away if I want to, you know, maybe, maybe it's not doing a video every single day and streaming every single day like I do. Maybe it's like doing a video once a week or something, just, just for fun.

• 6:41Brian Preston?

  What's the game that got you in? What's the game that you feel like you had your biggest break? And what are you, what are you kind of focusing on right now?

• 6:47Speaker 02

  You're looking right now for like super technical.

• 6:50Brian Preston?

  You're going through my journey.

• 6:51Speaker 05

  I've only actually played one game basically the entire time.

• 6:54Brian Preston?

  Wow.

• 6:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. It's actually a card game, but they have an online client. It's called Magic the Gathering.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 6:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  Social media marketing is what you did. You are currently a streamer. And you mentioned, hey, I came from poverty, came from food stamps. Let's look at where you guys are today, right now, in your mid 30s, because it is remarkable. Total net worth of almost 2.2 million dollars. Let's pause there for a moment. You guys are mid 30 year olds that are multimillionaires. Did you ever think that you would be in this position?

• 7:26Speaker 03

  I didn't think I needed a tissue this soon.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  It's different seeing the number here at this table than when I look at my budget spreadsheet, just because it feels more real, because we live well below our means, you know? We don't live the flashy millionaire lifestyle. And so to see that, it's, it's just kind of, for me, from, from coming from nothing, it's kind of mind blowing.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  I love you said it's, this is a product of small, consistent decisions over a lifetime, right? Living below our means, putting, I'm noticing on here, like if we walk through this, we've got like $31,000 in cash and cash equivalents. You have an investment portfolio of just under 1.1 million dollars. You have primary residence has a million dollar value. And then you do have this additional account for your son that has about 22,000. I don't see any debt on here.

• 8:13Brian Preston?

  Yeah, I was about to say, where's the mortgage?

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Where's mortgage, where's auto loan? None of that's on here, right?

• 8:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, we are completely debt free.

• 8:19Brian Preston?

  Wow.

• 8:19Speaker 03

  Including our home. And so I'm a personal finance creator now and.

• 8:25Speaker 03

  We talked about the trade offs because our mortgage rate was very low, like so low. I don't even want to say it.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no, you gotta tell us now.

• 8:32Speaker 03

  No, we're gonna get it in the comments. 2.3.

• 8:35Brian Preston?

  Oh, wow, that's even better than mine. That's a 15 year, is that a 15 year mortgage?

• 8:40Speaker 02

  Everything's fine.

• 8:40Speaker 03

  It was originally, I think it was 15, yes. And then we paid it off in under three years.

• 8:46Brian Preston?

  Wow.

• 8:47Speaker 03

  That was at our peak earning years and our goal really is has been freedom and flexibility. And I knew that we could invest more and like probably earn more if we invested. But with our goal of fire, I was like, I don't want a mortgage payment. I want to have our expenses as low as possible so that we could, if we really need to in times where tough, like we're not going to lose our home, we could go mow lawns if we needed to and survive like because our expenses are low. And he's like, yeah, let's pay it off, let's pay it off. So we did still invest a little bit like we, I think we loaded up the like the IRAs. But other than that, we put every dollar to the house.

• 9:23Brian Preston?

  Well, that's why I want to clarify this. So were y'all saving and investing at least 25% towards traditional investments? Or do you think you were doing a much lower number and then paying off the debt?

• 9:33Speaker 03

  During that window, it was probably a bit lower.

• 9:37Brian Preston?

  But I see these numbers and I want to know how high has this gotten? And where are we at, you know, from a historic standpoint on your income? Cause to pay off a house in three years, there's some money coming through.

• 9:48Speaker 03

  Yes, I want to say when we first got together, we were probably at a combined income of 120,000, like 60,000 each. And then we peaked at about 425,000 for one year, but that was only one year where we were really busting our bus. Yeah. But I want to say on average, it has ranged between like this 250 to like 300 mark. But we've always just kept expenses like super, super low and everything has either gone to investments or the house. So our savings rate has ranged anywhere from 50%. So I think one month it was like 85%. So we just, as soon as it hits the count, out of sight, out of mind.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  No matter where the income went, you guys stayed at a very modest living below your means lifestyle.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 10:32Brian Preston?

  How long has the house been paid off?

• 10:34Speaker 03

  Oh man, at least like three years, four years.

• 10:36Brian Preston?

  Any regret on that? Or do you have any inkling that maybe I'd have done that a little differently?

• 10:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, I wish I had a Magic 8 Ball back then, right? I mean, who knows what the market's gonna do? I think for us, it was really about the freedom that it would bring to be completely debt-free. If I'd redid it, or if we had the chance to do it again, and I knew the markets were pretty good, I'd, yeah, I definitely would do probably more balanced approach.

• 10:59Brian Preston?

  I think for a lot of people who can't, who don't have discipline, it's okay that you need to, to go hard on the debt because you got, a lot of people get themselves in trouble. But I do think for financial mutants, that for people who are, who are maximizers and don't struggle with basic disciplines, they don't have to go teetotal on, on debt. I think there's a balanced approach to it. Cause I would, I love people who can extinguish debt quickly, but typically, the maximizing way is that you still go through the steps one through seven where you're, where you're getting, you know, your Roth contributions, you're getting all your 401Ks, all the tax advantage ways that the government's saying, hey, we're gonna restrict how much you can put in this account. So you might as well get while the getting's good, load up this stuff,

• 11:43Brian Preston?

  because the government's only gonna let you do this much per year.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  We recognize that money is nothing more than a tool that allows us to accomplish the goals that we have. And you guys have made it abundantly clear that being debt-free, having the mortgage gone, was a goal. And so it's something you pursued aggressively. And so what we have to figure out is, when we pursue a goal like that so aggressively, there are other goals that that impacts. And that's kind of what we want to unpack today, because you guys have said, going to age 40, you want to be work optional, right? We want to be able to not have to work if we don't want to. And I'm assuming you don't ever want to have to go back to work. The idea was to be financially independent and stay financially independent. Walk us through currently how you guys are thinking about your account setup and your savings, and how you plan on actually exiting at 40.

• 12:25Speaker 03

  We actually have a bit of like a dual fire situation going. So the idea was that we have our traditional retirement accounts coasting, and we project that those can grow upwards of three to four million by the time we hit 60. So we wanted to let those grow and be a pile of cash waiting for us. When we turn 60.

• 12:44Speaker 02

  Coast fire.

• 12:45Speaker 03

  Coast fire. Yep. So we have traditional retirement coasting and then we have this tack, the brokerage account for early retirement. That would be the bridge fund from age 40 to 60 to get us there. So we were expecting maybe a slightly higher drawdown than like the 4% rule since it's only 20 years. And we've been pretty flexible too, because like our work has been, I think, pretty easy for us to pick up. And so we have a pretty aggressive risk tolerance as well. So we would be using this early retirement brokerage fund and drawing down from that. And then at 60, that's kind of where I admit like it starts to get a little overwhelming for me because then you got social security stuff and then we could have a really big pile of cash sitting there.

• 13:29Speaker 03

  And it's like, oh, we got to figure that out.

• 13:31Brian Preston?

  Or maybe not.

• 13:32Speaker 03

  Or maybe not.

• 13:35Brian Preston?

  A great 20 year run. What happens now?

• 13:39Speaker 03

  Right. So I guess that's kind of the, the two piles of money that we're, we're looking to use for like early retirement and then traditional retirement.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  So two different piles of money, two different goals to fund. How are you guys saving currently?

• 13:49Speaker 03

  We're actually boosting up the emergency fund. It's, it's actually about 40,000 now.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 13:54Speaker 03

  So ideally we want to get that too closer to 100,000 to help us like offset the sequence of returns risk once we do retire. So we'll have that there. And really everything is piling into the brokerage pretty much. We're going to continually add a little bit to that high yield savings for the emergency fund. And then the rest is just going to early retirement, which I'm like, should I probably put some into like the SEP IRA?

• 14:23Speaker 02

  So if we think about these two goals that you have, right? We have this one early retirement goal from age 40 to 60. But then there is this secondary goal that's like 60 to the rest of our life.

• 14:32Brian Preston?

  Yeah.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  Right? Like it's kind of what we're thinking through. And where your mind has been from a savings standpoint is hey, everything that we're going to say, we want to save to fund that first goal. We want to make sure we get through that hurdle first. Correct?

• 14:43Speaker 03

  Our complete focus right now has been this early retirement fund.

• 14:46Brian Preston?

  Awesome. Annual income. What's that? Who's, who's making what?

• 14:48Speaker 05

  Currently that, that is almost exclusively mine. She has started picking up her, her side business as well. But mine's been pretty steady. I would say the last one.

• 14:58Brian Preston?

  Four.

• 14:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, at least four or five years. It's been probably between the 200 to 250 mark. And then, yeah, I'm just starting to ramp up my income.

• 15:06Brian Preston?

  I'm noticing zero to 100, zero to 100, meaning that y'all are all in on one behavior. Do y'all have, I mean, are you open if we figure out that you're doing a lot of things right? Are you open if we figure out that maybe on or off is not the, y'all are more binary with the decision making?

• 15:23Speaker 02

  That's partially why we're here, right?

• 15:24Brian Preston?

  Yeah.

• 15:25Speaker 03

  I'm totally open. For me, the way that I work best has always been focus on one thing because it gets really overwhelming for me if I don't. And then before it was a lot of like, invest in the HSA, invest in this, invest in that. And then I'm like, I want to retire early. I want to retire early.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  So I'm just gonna do this one thing.

• 15:41Speaker 03

  One thing, just get it done.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  Well, let's, okay, let's test it. Let's test the plan, see, see how that's, see how that's going, right?

• 15:46Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  All right, so you guys have said, all right, we're gonna fund all the money that we have, all the savings we're gonna do into this after tax account. So if we think about it, really from now at age 35 until 40, we're gonna be growing those assets. So here's what we said, all right, if we have initial starting value of $532,000, we're gonna be conservative on our rate of return. I think 6% is low, but again, coast fire is a pretty risky endeavor. There's a lot of variables that can affect it. So we'd rather be much more conservative in our assumptions and things turn out better than we planned for, than be aggressive and say, uh-oh, uh-oh, didn't think through that. So 6% rate of return, you guys have let us know that you're saving about $7,000 a month into that after tax,

• 16:30Speaker 02

  after tax account from age 35 to 40. And then what we said, and we've kind of had some back and forth conversations around this and what your burn rate is. Again, you said you have a young child at home, two years old, right?

• 16:41Brian Preston?

  Yep.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Lots gonna happen in the next 20 years, just in terms of like what that looks like. And so again, we'd rather be very conservative in our assumptions as opposed to being overly aggressive, right? This, we're doing our 3D glasses, we kind of want to focus on that bottom D, that doo doo plan. What happens if it's worse than we planned for, right? So we said, okay, what if we assume that from age 40 to 60, you have an $8,500 a month burn rate? We want that to increase with inflation every year at 3%. Do all those seem reasonable and in line with what you guys have been talking about, conversations you've been having?

• 17:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would say so.

• 17:14Speaker 05

  She's been running through a lot of simulations of

• 17:17Speaker 03

  All the Monte Carlo.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  I love it. That's great.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  But yeah, I would definitely say, transparently, I would say that I am definitely a pretty optimistic person. So this is really good, though, to help, I think, reality check me.

• 17:30Speaker 05

  Awesome.

• 17:30Speaker 03

  Because I do higher rate of returns, but I think I need this. I need this kind of reality check to keep me grounded.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  Hold on, so you, I just want to make sure I understand this. So when it comes to modeling, you model high rates of return. But when it comes to things like debt arbitrage and paying off the debt, it wasn't given that there were going to be high rates. I just want to make sure. Do you see there's a tension there? Right? There's a conflict.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  Hmm. I guess I didn't really think about that.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  Right? Like, you model a higher rate, but if you believe that there really was going to be a higher rate, then paying off a 2.3% mortgage would not have made mathematical sense, right?

• 18:02Speaker 03

  I guess it's kind of, it's more, it's like a mindset thing for me, definitely. It wasn't a math thing.

• 18:07Brian Preston?

  You know, the thing is, Kenji said, I'm giving you a lot of control. So we just want to make sure your blind spots are accounted for, too. You guys are doing incredible things. We just have to make sure that we protect you from those blind spots. So you don't get yourself in a pickle of a situation. Because if you do all the planning off of the dream, man, life is going to, you have a two-year-old, so you already know.

• 18:28Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 18:29Brian Preston?

  Life has a sense of humor. It's up to creating the three sides of the plan to make sure that nothing derailed you through this.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  If we're starting with $532,000 of after-tax assets, we're going to save $7,000 a month. By the time you get to 40, it turns into a really substantial sum of assets, right? Again, this is assuming 6% rate of return, fairly conservative. Just your bridge account, just that first account, is going to be about $1.2 million. Let's pause there for a moment. That's pretty awesome.

• 18:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think that's exactly the number you're shooting for.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  A million dollars in after-tax assets at age 40. Is that the number that you were shooting for?

• 19:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, a big question mark for us was healthcare subsidies. And so that's kind of in flux right now. So I think if there were more subsidies, I think 1.2 was around that number. But without them, 1.4 or 5 would be a little bit safer for us. So that's not too far from the range.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  So we're in line?

• 19:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  Great. We have these two different goals. These two different bosses on the game of life we're trying to beat. Boss number one and then big boss number two. Oh, now I get it. Right.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  I was trying to, trying to connect.

• 19:34Brian Preston?

  Brought it back to like supermarket.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  That's what I was thinking, right? When we get to age 40, we want to think about what do your three buckets look like at that point? Because again, we've let the other retirement assets just kind of coast, at least for the next five years. And so when we get there, your tax deferred, your pre-tax bucket will be about $570,000. Your tax-free Roth bucket will be about $235,000 and then your after-tax will be 1.2 million. Now, what we did is we assumed the after-tax only grows at 6%. We, again, we'll be very conservative with that account. But for your retirement accounts, we did say we'll grow them at 7.5%. That's even still a little conservative, but for you guys, you're young. And if you're checking out and you're going to do coast fire, you want to be conservative in the assumptions to make sure that you're not overly rosy.

• 20:15Brian Preston?

  Does any part of you like twitch a little bit that some of the Roth and stuff is not getting maximized? Does that bother you at all?

• 20:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I guess that was a question I had for you is that I was nervous that the pro rata rule applied to us. So I didn't do any conversions and especially with our, the tax bracket that we're in right now. I also wanted to be double safe. So I think for me, I see that tax renumbered, I'd like it to be a lot higher. But I was just concerned about getting hit with a huge tax bill if I did something wrong.

• 20:44Brian Preston?

  Right.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  We'll walk you through that.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  Spoiler alert.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  Okay, so if this is what we have to work with, 1.2 million dollars, we really need that account to bridge us from age 40 to 60. Because we can't technically get access to these other retirement accounts until 59 and a half. So we said, okay, well, how's this play out? If we're going to be withdrawing $8,500 a month and we're going to grow that with inflation, you know, 85 today won't be the same as 85 10 years from now. How does that play out if we just think in linear terms? And again, you already mentioned Monte Carlo. Obviously, the way that you would want to do this is run it through Monte Carlo simulation with a number of variables. But just conceptually, we want to show you sort of a linear illustration of how this looks. What you can see is if you have 1.2 million dollars and you do have that higher withdrawal rate that you've already acknowledged, right?

• 21:30Speaker 02

  If you're pulling out $8,500 a month, it's going to be like an 8.5% withdrawal rate on that 1.2. What actually ends up happening is that by age 52, the bridge account's empty.

• 21:43Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  All right, let me pause there for a moment. What do you guys think about that? How do you feel about that?

• 21:47Speaker 03

  I thought the number would be closer to like a, maybe like a 6% drawdown, but even still, that might just push us out a few more years. So I think we need to maybe not be so aggressive. I'm like, or optimistic and be a little bit more conservative in our, because I don't want to be 52 and then be like, oh, Kenji, go back to streaming.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  You're kidding. That's the hard conversation.

• 22:12Brian Preston?

  Your instincts are spot on. Because this, this assumption, we went, like Beau mentioned earlier, put on your 3D glasses. We've gone full doo doo here. And the fact that this is assuming you're spending all of this and not actually putting any money in the background to offset this.

• 22:27Speaker 03

  Right.

• 22:27Brian Preston?

  We know that, and that's the part, but you're in conflict in the fact that you create this great income from something you love doing, but you are kind of the servant to content. We, by the way, we resemble. We love it is the greatest job in the world, but you, man, you do feel under the thumb that you have to keep creating because the machine gets mad if you don't create.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Oh, that's for sure the case.

• 22:51Brian Preston?

  So you just, you said something earlier is that I would love to do it because I want to, not because I have to. But it is still a big threshold decision if you ever dial down the quantity, because we know that our overlord algorithms, they, they don't like it when you dial down the content amount. So, but we, but we can probably put some assumption that there's going to be something coming in.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  If this is the strategy that you guys wanted to perpetrate, you wanted to do this thing where we focus on this first boss, this first goal, this first hurdle first, what would be required to make it work? And we said, well, obviously the thing that would be required to make it work would be some sort of supplemental income. And so we just kind of did some reverse engineering to say, okay, how much income would Kenji need to be bringing in in order for this, this plan that you guys currently have in place to work? And the answer is 42, 50 a month. And we said, again, to be conservative, let's just not even inflation adjust that. So even though our $8,500 monthly need is increasing with inflation, we just assume that every Month from age forty until sixty, you could generate about forty-three, forty-two, fifty in income. Does that seem reasonable?

• 24:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think so for sure, especially since I think her stuff is going to start taking off a little bit as well. So, you know, it's going to be like, even if mine goes down, you know, I think she'll also offset some of that.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  This, again, what we're trying to do is we're reverse engineering how to make your plan work. And if the plan that you have right now in place is the one you want to stick to, this would be a way to possibly make that work. Now, what it does do is it actually ends up depleting your entire taxable account. So when we get to age sixty, when we just conquered first boss.

• 24:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  When we get to, well, now we get to the big boss, uh, this is what you have to work with at that point. Again, assuming a seven and a half percent rate of return, your pre-tax, your tax-deferred assets will have grown to about two and a half million dollars. And your Roth assets will have grown to a little over a million bucks. So here you sit with like three point five, three point six million dollars. Give me some thoughts on that. How does that feel and sound?

• 24:57Speaker 05

  When I'm sixty, that's, that's great, right?

• 24:59Speaker 03

  I mean, I'm sure inflation adjusted, it's not going to feel as much as it does now. But still, I mean, that feels and sounds like a comfortable number to me.

• 25:07Speaker 02

  I want you to bottle up and say, uh, that feels nice and comfortable because we're going to come back and visit this. I just, no, no, no, no, I just want you to, I just want you to, oh, man, yeah. This seems like it's gonna be great.

• 25:20Speaker 05

  We're gonna shake it and then.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  This seems like it's gonna be great.

• 25:24Speaker 00

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• 26:23Speaker 02

  I do want to be clear. What we've tried to lay out here is, okay, what would be required in order for the plan that you guys have in place to work? Now, we're gonna have tons of people in the comments, we're gonna have tons of people that are acknowledging, "No, no, no, when you're part of FIRE, when you're part of FINE, there are other strategies available than just the after-tax account." And so, we'd be remiss if we didn't just briefly mention, yes, there are some different strategies you could carry out. You could, during this period from 40 to 60, you could do Roth conversion ladders, where essentially you convert some of your pre-tax assets into Roth assets to create basis that you could access. Now, there's gonna be a tax cost to that, so it's gonna cause the taxable account to, like, wane even more quickly. But that is an option. The second option we could potentially look at is 72-T distributions, which is a special

• 27:08Speaker 02

  part of the tax code where you can take substantially equal periodic payments from your retirement accounts if you structure them a certain way. So if you needed to create income from pre-tax accounts, technically, you could do that and not have to pay the 10% penalty. So that's an option. And the third option is you do have some Roth assets, and we know that when it comes to Roth, we can pull basis out, penalty-free and tax-free. So again, if you depleted that after-tax account, there are some ways for you to do that. But all of those, everything that I just laid out, kind of has you sort of pulling away from your second boss to conquer the first boss. This game's too hard. You know what I mean? Right? So that's the... Because when we think about this visually, you have this first goal, you have this first

• 27:53Speaker 02

  hurdle you want to make it over, getting to age 60. And we can celebrate that and be like, "Yes! We did it! We made it!" But in our view, getting from forty to sixty is not nearly as significant of a hurdle to have crossed over than getting from sixty to all the way through the rest of your life. You live to ninety, a hundred, a hundred plus, whatever that number may be for you guys. Because it's likely going to be easier to go back to work between forty and sixty if something goes, uh-oh. Between sixty and a hundred, it might be hard to go back. It may be hard to be a-

• 28:28Speaker 03

  Are you saying a sixty-year-old couldn't be a-

• 28:29Brian Preston?

  We can come up with a whole new thing. I'm closer to this sixty and I can tell you, nobody wants to see me playing streaming. That's not where my income is going to come from.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  So, so we, we acknowledge there's this, this second goal. We have to make sure that we appropriately account for. You've already laid out for us. You have this personality trait where when I have a goal, I get fixated and I want to solve that. And what we want to be careful of is you don't just solve the first goal of what I'm going to call your sabbatical or pre-retirement retirement at the cost of the second goal. Right. Of the bigger one. So let's talk a little bit about the second goal, the second boss we have to beat. We've already laid out for you what your retirement assets will do. They're starting with about, what, half a million dollars? And if they just grew at that seven and a half percent, by the time you get to age sixty, it's going to be worth about three point six million dollars, which sounds, you, remember I said bottle it up?

• 29:23Speaker 02

  This sounds great, sounds amazing, sounds awesome. If we were to then just assume a four percent withdrawal rate, you know, reasonable withdrawal rate on that sum of dollars, and they were to bring those dollars back into today's terms, we feel comfortable that three point six million dollars for you guys at age sixty could generate about seventy thousand dollars a year.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 29:44Brian Preston?

  You, you're seeing the problem.

• 29:46Speaker 03

  That's about the lifestyle we have now, or maybe a little less. But I think I would want a little more comfort in traditional retirement.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  Well, what we laid out, remember, was that this, during your forty to sixty, you were living off of eighty-five hundred dollars a month.

• 30:01Brian Preston?

  But y'all told us internally, seven grand a month are close to eighty-five thousand.

• 30:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:05Brian Preston?

  So we're still, even with y'all's optimistic number, because we felt like we wanted to be conservative, there's still a, a spread there of fifteen thousand dollars a year. Is y'all know life, do you want to go less or do you want to maybe have a little cushion of margin? Because there's no going back. There's no, like, is once you cross this threshold, and you, you know, it's hard to get the water back up the hill. I mean, it's a big decision.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  That's totally fair. And I think like actually seeing it laid out and you know, we also want to be, I mean, I won't speak for Kenji, I'll let you speak for, but I, I want to be really generous with our money too. And so it's not necessarily about like just having all these luxurious things. It's like, I want to give a lot too. I want more money for that as well, to be able to be more generous. So, I mean, what does that number look like for you, Kenji?

• 30:54Speaker 05

  I mean, I could live in a shack as long as I have internet. So I guess.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  He said as long as I have internet.

• 30:59Speaker 05

  He's like Ready Player One over here.

• 31:03Speaker 03

  Right, yeah, yeah.

• 31:04Speaker 05

  I mean, I guess I want to, you know, I want to travel a bit more and stuff as well. So I, I would expect, you know, the difference between our, our yearly expenditures now and, you know, when we're older is I think it would be a bit more.

• 31:17Brian Preston?

  Kids are curveballs.

• 31:18Speaker 05

  Yes, yeah, for sure.

• 31:19Brian Preston?

  Kids, education, all the things, activities. I would probably lean more towards the conservative that there's going to be things that are going to actually squeeze on that back pocket more than you're probably realizing.

• 31:31Speaker 05

  Maybe we want our annual cash flow, you know, closer, if it's like 85 now, we want it close to 100 plus.

• 31:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. And I think I probably, I'm sure you will both get to it, but I probably need to check those blind spots, start investing a little bit more in the traditional retirement accounts.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  Well, so that's what, so that's where we, that's where we went with this. We said, okay, this, in our opinion, this does not get you there, but let's, again, reverse engineer. That's the beautiful thing about being able to plan.

• 31:56Brian Preston?

  I love your numbers. It's almost like we coordinated this. It's almost like we have a crystal ball ourselves, because look at what we've done. We built it up to $102,000.

• 32:04Speaker 05

  That's what I meant to say, not, not 100.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  That's right, that's right. So if we, if we just reverse engineer and say that's the standard of living you would like to have, $102,000, so that that way you're not essentially taking a pay cut when you go from first retirement to second retirement.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  Right.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  You live the same lifestyle. In order to do that, we think the pot of assets you would actually need to grow to by age 60 would be closer to like 5.3 million.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  Right? So 3.6 is kind of what you're on track for. 5.3 is what we're saying you should probably shoot for. Let me pause there for a moment. Does that sound daunting or difficult or something like, "Oh, man, that's like a whole lot more money. How are we gonna do that?"

• 32:41Speaker 05

  I mean, it's, it sounds like a lot, but I, I realize, or I understand that, you know, the, the compounding interest and stuff. Yeah, 25 years.

• 32:50Speaker 03

  I tried to teach him.

• 32:51Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. It sounds like a lot, but I guess from 3.6 to 5.3 maybe is not as much as we think. It's a course correction. Yeah. Little decisions have big results. I don't, I don't know what that course correction looks like, but I, I know it's, it's probably not as bad as, you know, your, your mind first.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  I thought it was a trick question, but I was like, it might not be as much as we think.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  Here's what we said. We said, okay, you know what? Let's not cause them to start eating beanie weenies and not, let's have the same cash outflow. What if they were gonna save the same amount of money, but we just wanted to save it a little bit differently?

• 33:23Speaker 05

  Optimized.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  Right now, you guys are saving $84,000 a year, $7,000 every month going into that after-tax account. Well, if, instead of doing that, what if we maximized our retirement opportunities available to us? And that is where we can talk about things like doing Roth contributions, or maybe back to a Roth contributions, looking at a solo 401k, because that might be a great solution to have in place for you guys that would remove some of the prorata rule stuff that you're concerned about.

• 33:48Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 33:49Speaker 02

  What if we could save $45,000 to the retirement account and still be saving $39,000 into the bridge account? So, we're still saving over $3,000 a month into that after-tax account. We're still growing it. At the same level of cash outflow, how would that change the plan? What concession would we have to make? Well, as we lay that out for you guys, instead of stopping at 40, if you could do that until age 43, what that then allows your retirement assets to do is go from 35 at 553 to by 43, when you actually start your COSS, instead of starting your COSS at 40, starting at 43, you have about a million and a half dollars

• 34:31Speaker 02

  in assets in retirement. If you let that million and a half dollars in assets in retirement grow to $5.3 million, you don't have to add anything else to it. You don't have to keep saving. It has you working for three additional years.

• 34:45Speaker 03

  That's only putting like the 3,000 something in the early. Retirement.

• 34:49Brian Preston?

  But also three years.

• 34:51Speaker 03

  But only.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  Because remember, if you're, if you're, if you work for an additional three years, that's three years that you're not having to live off the bridge account. That's three years that you're creating income. So when we actually look at how that plays from sort of like a bar chart standpoint, what you can see is instead of exiting at 40, you actually build your bridge account. It still gets to 1.2 million dollars. Even though you're saving less, you're just doing it for three more years. You're still able to draw that down. Eighty five hundred dollars a month, assuming that you still have the supplemental income of 4250 coming in. And then at the age, at age 60, you still have after tax assets left over.

• 35:30Speaker 03

  Well, I'm going to be honest, this sounds a lot better than the other charts you showed me. I, I didn't, I didn't realize, like, my initial personality trait was, oh, 3,000 in the early retirement thing isn't going to be nearly enough. It's going to take so, so much longer. And then when you're like, yeah, it's only three years.

• 35:47Brian Preston?

  But that, that's why it's important to actually do the planning is because it's back to that mentality, even of debt crusading is that you're thinking, well, let's just do this and it'll all work out. And that's great, but you quickly find out this is the power of compounding interest. Those small little decisions do have huge results. Don't sleep on the little stuff is because we're using the same dollar amount of money. It's just different decision matrix. And that different decision matrix is going to lead you in a completely different direction.

• 36:14Speaker 03

  I love how optimized this is because I'm, I'm like very frugal by nature. So I'm all about value and optimizing. So I'm very shocked I haven't addressed this yet, but I feel good about that.

• 36:25Speaker 05

  There's a little bar at the, at 60 as well.

• 36:27Speaker 03

  You can get a new string computer. This looks amazing.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  There's a number of different variables that you guys get to change. Like we showed the one where, okay, what if you save the same amount, but you just work a little bit longer? There's another scenario that we didn't model. This is homework for you guys to do. Hey, what if we just save more? If we still want to leave at 40, how much more would we need to save to be able to do that? You guys have done the hard work from poverty, from food stamps till now. You've made the hard decisions and put you in the driver's seat where you do get to pick and choose what your future looks like. You just have to make sure you finish the drill well. Don't exit too early without making sure that you have a plan that will actually get you to that great, big, beautiful tomorrow that you want.

• 37:12Speaker 03

  Oh, I don't want the tissue again.

• 37:17Speaker 03

  This feels, this is exactly what I was hoping for, like coming here and talking to you. And I'm, I'm so proud of like both of us of being able to build this together and like, thank you for trusting me to help manage things. Of course, we always talk about it like, but still it's just, um, the fact that this actually could be a reality and we're pretty close and I love the optimizing. It's just, it's like overwhelming.

• 37:41Speaker 05

  Yeah. I turn, I turn in the homework to the teacher, but the teacher's graded by her directors or whatever. This is, this is good.

• 37:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, this feels really good.

• 37:50Speaker 02

  The planning is not done. In our, in our view, the planning for you guys has just started. We wanted to lay out, cause obviously you have an affinity for this. You've been doing your own Monte Carlos. You've been doing your own analysis. What questions can we answer for you guys that'll be helpful as you go back to do your own planning?

• 38:06Speaker 03

  Where I get the most wary is taxes and I don't want to make a mistake there. So we currently have a SEP IRA for him. These traditional retirement accounts, like which one do I choose? Like what's right for us?

• 38:18Speaker 02

  So let's look at your net worth statement again. Let's look at how your accounts are currently structured. So when we look at you guys right now, and Kenji, I'm gonna just use your accounts. You have a traditional IRA that has $56,000 in it. You have a SEP IRA that has $74,000 in it. For your entity, for your enterprise, for the work you do, do you have any employees?

• 38:36Speaker 05

  No.

• 38:36Speaker 02

  It's just you, right?

• 38:37Speaker 05

  Just me, yeah.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  So that's how you're able to do a SEP contribution. And every year, you're able to contribute 20% of your net operating profit, depending on how you're structured, how you pay yourself, you're able to make that contribution. One of the beautiful things is if you were to have a solo 401k, and these days, solo 401ks and SEP IRAs aren't all that different. They still allow you to accomplish some of the same goals, but solo 401ks don't just allow for an employer contribution. It also allows for employee contribution. So you can do salary deferrals up to $23,500 plus a profit sharing component. So you're able to save in a really healthy manner inside of solo. But where it opens up additional planning is once you have that account open, and you can open it in any of the major custodians.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  You can open them at Fidelity or Vanguard or Charles Schwab, wherever you guys like, like to hold your assets. You can then consolidate some of his pre-tax accounts. You can move his traditional IRA into the solo 401k. You can move the SEP IRA into the solo 401k. Once you've done that, all of your pre-tax assets are now held inside a 401k account. There are no more outside IRA assets. So the prorata rule for backdoor Roths does not apply anymore. So, once you move those two accounts into the solo, then you can start doing backdoor Roths every single year. Put $7,000 in a traditional, after tax, don't take a deduction, convert it to Roth, do it again next year, over and over and over and over.

• 40:02Brian Preston?

  We're gonna need this in writing.

• 40:03Speaker 03

  You guys should do this for a living. You're pretty good at this. That's exactly the kind of direction that I was looking for because I've been so paralyzed by fear of like, if I do something wrong, all of a sudden we're gonna get this huge tax bill and we're in this higher income tax bracket. Like, I don't want to mess it up, so I've just left it. Just to like clarify, so you said that we can move his traditional IRA to the solo 401k, but then we could also move his Roth IRA somewhere?

• 40:31Speaker 02

  You wouldn't want to move that. You leave the Roth alone. Because that's every year, so you're gonna move his traditional, that's $56,000 into the solo. So, his traditional will have $0 in it. You're gonna move the SEP in there too, so that's gonna have $0 in it. Every year, you're gonna put $7,000 into that traditional. You're not gonna take a tax deduction, it's gonna be an after-tax contribution. And you're gonna convert that into the Roth IRA. So, it's gonna move from the traditional account into the Roth IRA.

• 40:57Brian Preston?

  The prorata rule exists because there's IRA assets. We're going to, this structure that Beau is laying out removes all those traditional IRA assets out of your portfolio.

• 41:09Speaker 03

  So, we're clearing, we're cleaning out that traditional IRA and now we have a beautiful place to do conversions.

• 41:14Speaker 02

  That's right, that's exactly right. For your stuff that you are now ramping up, do you have any employees?

• 41:19Speaker 03

  No, just.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Are you generating income from it?

• 41:22Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 41:22Speaker 02

  So right now, you could also do the exact same thing with a solo 401k for yourself. So you could have a solo 401k for your business and you could have one for your business. And you can implement both strategies in the same way to open up backdoor Roths for both of you guys.

• 41:35Brian Preston?

  The only curve ball you go run into Emily is your traditional area is a much bigger account. Yeah. And the only catch with solos, realize these things were were set up by the government to incentivize small business owners to set up retirement savings vehicles that was very similar to what Fortune 500 employees could have. The limitation is, is once they get over like $250,000, a lot of the tax filings, the 5500s and other things they exempt you out of now start showing back up on the scene. It's not a deal breaker. It just means you have to actually now start complying with some of those things. So if you did this, you just want to make sure you're going in with your eyes fully open so that you stay compliant on on all the processes.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  It's not hard. It's just a box you have to check.

• 42:16Brian Preston?

  Yeah. It's like most things. This is, remember what I always talk about on the show is we can tell you everything because building wealth is actually pretty simple. But that doesn't mean that complications don't just start showing up as the success shows up. You realize it is so hard for us to create content and data on a five-year, 20-year, 40-year, because just so much of life is going to happen. What I get so excited about with you guys is if you were like a client of the firm, every year we update all these things and we course correct. So every one of those 1% differences that we're changing the direction that are using, creating huge results, we get to to kind of in real time, adjust that for you guys on your personal situation.

• 43:01Brian Preston?

  So everything is not maximized on a five-year basis, not on a 10-year, 20-year, but every year we figure out what tweaks we need to do to to give you the best version. So that way we can figure out, do I need to save more? Or do we just need to change the restructure, the structure of how we're we're funding this? That's the stuff. You hear the excitement in both of our voices because that's, that's where the magic stuff happens. It really is, is we take very successful people. You guys are super successful and we get to tweak it and get you the best version of it.

• 43:31Speaker 03

  You know, honestly, like I've been asking myself that is like, are we at a point now of wealth where maybe we should consider working with like a financial fiduciary or somebody to help? Because this is starting to get into like the hard mode of the game, right? Like you said, like more money, more problems or more complexity. And so I have been like talking to Kenji too. I'm like, you know, like there's a point at which my knowledge extends and like ends. And I think this could be an opportunity for like you're saying, like getting more of that real time help of like course correcting. I don't want to just set it and forget it. And then 10, 20 years from now, I'm like,

• 44:03Speaker 02

  But man, I wish I would have.

• 44:05Speaker 03

  Right?

• 44:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 44:06Brian Preston?

  My favorite video game growing up was Contra. They came out that if you went up, down, left, right, left, right, B A, they give you 30 lives. Do you realize it was a cheat code because it now allowed what I couldn't do in three lives, I could do in 30 lives? You realize you've only got one financial life. So if you don't, if you screw it up, you've got the three, you don't even get the three, you get one.

• 44:31Speaker 03

  No cheat code.

• 44:32Brian Preston?

  So if you don't know, we are the cheat code. Because we are done. We are the up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right, B A's. Because we give you, you know, because we've done this hundreds of times.

• 44:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:43Brian Preston?

  We know where all the pitfalls are and all the struggles are. So that's what, I know you've been doing boss and all these other, but I kept going, man, the Contra code has to come in here somewhere. Because that is the way this kind of works financially as well.

• 45:00Speaker 05

  I want to make the best play is what they say. The play that gives you the most chance to win.

• 45:04Brian Preston?

  Yep.

• 45:04Speaker 05

  You can make, you can make the best play and still lose, right?

• 45:07Brian Preston?

  Yep.

• 45:07Speaker 05

  Because that'll happen sometimes in life. But as long as you did what was going to, in theory, give you the best chances, then I'm happy. So as long as, as long as we, we get that plan settled in motion.

• 45:18Speaker 02

  There's actually a third boss. And it's not really a boss. Once you've beaten the game, then you get to do some pretty fun stuff. We thought a visual representation of this would get you excited. Once you get past the first hurdle, and then once you get past the second hurdle, then, then you get to actually do the stuff that you mentioned at the very beginning.

• 45:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:38Speaker 02

  Hey, I want to be generous. I want to leave, like, I want to do other things. I need to make sure that I, I make decisions with my money so that I can solve the problems that I have. But once I've solved those problems, then I get to do what I want. When I want, how I want and have the impact that I want to have.

• 45:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:54Speaker 02

  And that, when you get to that part of the journey, that's when the game gets really, really fun. Here's your homework. You ready guys?

• 45:59Speaker 03

  Ready.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  Number one, we're going to give you copies of all this, everything we've got of, we're going to send to you. We want you to rework the assumptions, work the assumptions based on what you feel comfortable with and do it in sort of a 3D fashion. The dream, which you've got down, the down to earth, which is probably even a little better than we've laid out. And then the do do, what we've kind of laid out, very conservative. We then want you to take this and either do it yourself or consider finding a professional to help. Cause once you have the assumptions in, then you want to do the Monte Carlo test. We've all done linear, straight line assumptions. What we'd really want to do is run a Monte Carlo simulation saying, okay, what's our probability of success with this group of factors? Okay. What if we change this? How does our probability change and continue to iterate through the process? As you're doing that, we want you to optimize.

• 46:44Speaker 02

  You guys should do some research around, hey, should we be doing solo 401ks? If we do solo 401ks, does that mean that we can then consolidate our IRA assets? If we didn't consolidate our IRA assets, does that mean that now we can start doing backdoor Ross and really starting to optimize? You guys are in a great spot. You are in the driver's seat.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  You had me nervous for a while. I was like, but wait, there's more.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  You guys are great. You're in an awesome, awesome spot. And I think there's a lot of people out there are going to look to you guys and say, man, I want to be able to recreate and do what they've been able to do.

• 47:17Brian Preston?

  So if others want to know how to do exactly what Emily and Kenji have done, where do they need to go?

• 47:24Speaker 02

  If you'd like to be a guest on Making a Millionaire, you can go to moneyguy.com/apply. Or if you'd like to check out any of our free tools and resources, you can go to moneyguy.com/resources.

• 47:33Brian Preston?

  Thank you so much. I'm your host, Brian Preston, Mr. Bo Hanson, Money Guy team, out.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Making a Millionaire is hosted by Brian Preston and Bo Hanson. Brian and Bo are partners at Abound Wealth Management. Abound Wealth Management is a registered investment advisory firm regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission in accordance and compliance with the securities laws and regulations. Abound Wealth Management does not render or offer to render personalized investment or tax Advice through Making a Millionaire. The information provided is for informational purposes only, may not be suitable for all investors, and does not constitute financial, tax, investment, or legal advice. All investments involve a degree of risk, including the risk of loss. The guests featured on Making a Millionaire are not clients of Abound Wealth Management at the time of recording. Their participation should not be considered a testimonial or endorsement of Abound Wealth Management.

• 48:25Speaker 07

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