We Catch MAJOR Pitfalls in This Doctor's DIY Portfolio | Making a Millionaire

Chuck and Margo have a BIG shovel. But getting through medical school gave Chuck some BIG blind spots. We want to show them a better way to do money, and set them up for a life of abundance. 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. 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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• 0:41Speaker 03

  Chuck and Margot have a big shovel. So you've paid down from $307,000 down to $74,000 by your early 30s.

• 0:48Speaker 04

  And we're at 54 now, because I paid off all our 20 in the last.

• 0:51Speaker 03

  But getting through medical school gave Chuck some big blind spots. What's the interest rate on the student loans presently?

• 0:56Speaker 04

  Well, that's the issue. It's nothing.

• 0:58Speaker 03

  Oh, it's 0%. We want to show them a better way to do money and set them up for a life of abundance.

• 1:08Brian Preston?

  Welcome to Making a Millionaire, where we help millionaires and millionaires in the making build their great, big, beautiful tomorrow. I'm your host, Brian Preston, joined by Mr. Bo Hanson.

• 1:19Speaker 03

  That's right. We are so excited that we get to do a deep dive into the financial lives of listeners just like you. And today, we have Chuck and Margot joining us. Thanks so much for hanging out with us, guys.

• 1:29Speaker 06

  Thanks for having us.

• 1:30Speaker 04

  We're excited.

• 1:30Speaker 03

  Awesome. So for those of the folks out there watching who don't know you guys, give us a rundown. Who are you? What's your family situation? What do you do? Give us like the quick bio.

• 1:40Speaker 06

  So we are... Do you want me to talk professionally, personally?

• 1:45Speaker 03

  How old are you? Got any kids? What do you do for a living?

• 1:49Speaker 06

  We are in our 30s, in our early 30s. We have a little one, two and a half years old.

• 1:55Speaker 03

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 1:56Speaker 06

  Just one kid, yes. Um, we live on the East Coast, sort of mid-Atlantic area. Both of us, Chuck is a doctor, I'm a psychologist. So both did quite a bit of training in our twenties. Yes, and we were out in the Midwest for all of that and then moved back east. That's where I'm from originally. And it was in the marriage contract.

• 2:24Speaker 04

  But no, it's been great. I mean, we have a big family out on the East Coast that has been very supportive and been great to have around now that we're back.

• 2:32Speaker 03

  Y'all were both in school for like a million years. Is that where y'all met? Is that how y'all came together?

• 2:36Speaker 06

  We actually met, we were both living in the DC area right after undergrad. So like I had just graduated, he was one year out and we were both doing, it was very, very nerdy. Both doing.

• 2:52Speaker 03

  Molly, you're on the great place for doing that yourself.

• 2:55Speaker 06

  Research fellowships and we were in different labs, totally different areas, but we met through friends.

• 3:00Speaker 03

  Love the lab. I love it. That's awesome. Oh, that's so fun. And so you're a doctor, what kind of medicine, what kind of doctor are you?

• 3:07Speaker 04

  See, I'm an anesthesiologist.

• 3:08Speaker 03

  Anesthesiologist. Awesome. Cool, cool, cool. Now, as you guys were great, you filled out a form kind of telling us a little bit about who you are and your background. It sounds like growing up, as it relates to like money and finances, y'all had two very different backgrounds. Can you kind of walk us through what was your financial childhood like? And like, how did that form your view of money today? And how's it impact y'all's relationship too?

• 3:31Speaker 04

  So I would say I'm the anxious out of the two of us, to say the least. And it's from my background. I mean, I grew up mostly with my father after like second grade and on. And we, you know, we had a great growing up. We had everything we ever really needed, but I would say like low middle class. But he always had a great job and I think, you know, as soon as we were getting older, like, you know, he definitely advanced in the financial world and started doing really well. One of the principles he always taught me was like, when you go to work someday or when you wake up in the morning, you want to be happy.

• 4:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:01Speaker 04

  And so like, I always had this kind of pounding. He was never like the happiest guy in the world to go to work. And.

• 4:06Speaker 03

  So do as I say, not as I do, right?

• 4:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so like, I always had this like, I really need to figure out what I want to do. I want to figure out what I want to do, but I also want to make good money.

• 4:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:15Speaker 04

  That's not why I ended up in medicine. Like I never went to medicine to make money. I just am a nerd at heart. And so that's how I ended up in medicine.

• 4:22Speaker 03

  She laughed a little too hard.

• 4:24Speaker 04

  But yeah, I don't know why, but my childhood created a lot of insecurities. And I still have a ton of insecurities.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  Were there traumatic events that you went through as a kid? Or it just?

• 4:34Brian Preston?

  It was just scarcity and doing without?

• 4:36Speaker 04

  I don't know. I mean, to me, it wasn't like, I didn't feel like we had like a scarcity mindset. But for some reason, I just always had this like insecurity. And I don't, I don't know why, to be honest, like.

• 4:46Brian Preston?

  What do you mean? When you say insecurity, I'm trying to figure out, is this like fear of like you're too conservative with things? Or fear that there's not going to be enough money or fear? What, what, what, you didn't tell me what the fear is?

• 4:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, like fear of not have enough money.

• 4:59Brian Preston?

  Okay.

• 5:00Speaker 04

  And so I think, and I mean, it probably started, um, you know, I always got a few handshakes here and there from my parents in regards to like a couple hundred dollars when I was in college. But I pretty much went through college by all private loans or private or federal loans. I worked in the summer and like to go into medicine, you had to do research. So therefore you made no money in the summer. But I would survive on like $3,000 for the whole year of college.

• 5:20Brian Preston?

  Wow.

• 5:21Speaker 04

  You know what I mean? And so I was always like.

• 5:23Speaker 03

  Was it college great when you could actually do that?

• 5:24Brian Preston?

  So, well, I think it's incredible to say, I mean, it was not only driven by fear, but it was necessity to get you through that, that period. Because when I was reading your notes, you pretty much were on your own post-high school. And you've been to school forever. We all know school's not cheap. So that, I mean, I can understand the, that some of the mental things that we're going to hopefully help you unpack. But there was a time and a place that that probably offered a lot of value.

• 5:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:49Brian Preston?

  And you reaching the goal that you've accomplished. It's pretty cool in some ways. I know adversity, you know, is not desired, but there are times, you know, I've shared that. I started my first business after my father passed away. And that was a horrible thing, but I got this clarity of trauma. Growing up with scarcity sometimes can create a superpower. Now, we got to unpack it because it's not healthy if it stays that way forever. But I love that you shared that.

• 6:16Speaker 03

  What about your background? What was your financial background with money like?

• 6:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, so we had pretty different upbringings when it comes to finances, I would say. I was extremely fortunate, not that you weren't, but um, from an upper middle-class family, um, had grandparents who had done very well and were able to finance all of their grandchildren's education.

• 6:45Brian Preston?

  Oh, wow.

• 6:46Speaker 06

  Which, yeah, which like took just a huge burden off of my parents' generation. Not to say that I wouldn't have been able to go to the schools that I went to, but, you know, didn't have that same burden of loans and things like that because my education was paid for. I always had a job, like in, starting in high school, I was a lifeguard. Like, you know, I always worked. Um, but I, but it was more working because that was a value in my family rather than necessarily like a necessity.

• 7:22Brian Preston?

  Trying to have money to pay bills.

• 7:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly. Um, and so when I worked, that money was all for me. Like, I got to use that money how I wanted to. Um, I would say we talked very little about money growing up. Um, to this day, I have no idea what my dad made or makes. Um, my, my dad, in a lot of ways, interestingly, even though he came also from a very comfortable background, has much more of a similar mindset to Chuck. Um, sometimes in my family, there's like a little inside joke about their similar tendencies on some of these things.

• 8:03Brian Preston?

  If, if, I know your parents didn't talk to you about money, but did you feel like your parents talked to each other? Was there good communication between your parents on what y'all had, what they had and did not? Or did you feel like money wasn't even shared that much there either?

• 8:17Speaker 06

  Hmm, yeah, it wasn't really shared that much either. I think, I mean, my mom tells this story, and if she watches this, if my parents watch this, they might get it.

• 8:28Speaker 06

  But I'm gonna say this.

• 8:29Brian Preston?

  We'll clean it up to where you don't, we don't mess up Thanksgiving. I still think the share could be very beneficial because of stuff in relationships.

• 8:37Speaker 06

  Okay, love you guys.

• 8:39Speaker 06

  But my mom like tells this story that like she one time opened up a bank account because I forget why, oh, because she felt like my dad was like micromanaging her. My dad was like, he's very, he gets very anxious about finances and she always felt like, um, he made her feel like we didn't, like she would spend and there wasn't enough, even though it, that absolutely was not the case. It was, yeah, we were fine. And she was like, okay, well, I'm just gonna open my own account so that like, I don't have you micromanaging me. And apparently that went over quite poorly. And so, um, she closed the account. But yeah,

• 9:23Speaker 06

  it's interesting. My dad, like, even though we've, thank God, like, always been very comfortable, like there, I grew up with him having that anxiety, but it, and I think as an adult, I've not like completely boomeranged the other way, but like.

• 9:43Speaker 03

  You don't have that same level of anxiety. So as you guys got married and started a relationship together, was there friction there that you came from different, or even when you think about like the childhood you're trying to create for your two and a half year old, like, which childhood do you want to emulate? Do you want more of your childhood or more of your childhood?

• 10:01Speaker 06

  I mean, I think that like our core values align really well. So we really haven't had friction around it. Um, we've been able to kind of navigate it together. And like, I think we have pretty good communication about finances. Um, I think we also just like balance each other pretty well. And it's kind of, yeah, like he has some really strong strengths and some not as strong areas of growth, we'll call them. And I have some really strong strengths and some significant areas of growth.

• 10:38Brian Preston?

  Sure. Well, that's a good beginning of the yay.

• 10:40Speaker 06

  Yes, but they happen to fit really well together.

• 10:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, for some reason, we like literally mesh about everything in life very easily and finances, even though like I'm very anxious, like expensive purchases, for instance, she knows that I'm not gonna pull the trigger.

• 10:52Brian Preston?

  Right.

• 10:53Speaker 04

  And she'll just literally sit there and tell me to buy it.

• 10:56Speaker 03

  I love it. Cause she knows you probably need that. Like you need someone to kind of coach you along in that.

• 10:59Brian Preston?

  I wanna, I wanna get a pull out a little bit more. Cause you said you do, y'all communicate well about finances. Give it, tell us a little bit about that. Cause we talk about all the time going over annual net worth statements and other things. What tools do y'all use to communicate money back and forth to each other?

• 11:15Speaker 06

  Every like six months or so, he's like, so I think we should do like a little finance date night.

• 11:20Brian Preston?

  Yeah, I love it.

• 11:22Speaker 03

  It's a favorite kind of date.

• 11:23Speaker 06

  I would say it happens 50% of the time. So probably we're talking once a year. But um, I don't know. You've made me do like Kinder questions before and not maybe.

• 11:37Speaker 04

  I think we've also had like, so like when I came across the Kinder questions, it was like one of those like aha, aha things to me where it was like, how do we want to live life? And we've had a couple of hiccups along the way. And every time we have a hiccup, we go back to the Kinder questions. Yeah. Like create a goal. Our, our goals for the year are short term, long term.

• 11:54Brian Preston?

  And how do you feel after those meetings?

• 11:57Speaker 06

  Good. I'm always glad when, when we've done them. I mean, the other thing is like, like he said, before we started, um, he's been really interested in finance. And so like, we talk about it casually a lot. Like he'll share with me what he's learning about different things. He'll like take courses. And then like almost every night when we're just like hanging out and watching TV, like I'm watching some trash reality show on Netflix. And he's like doing our finance, like dropping information. So like I'm, we're communicating about it frequently on a less formal basis too.

• 12:37Brian Preston?

  That's great.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  Well, it sounds like you guys do mesh really well. And obviously thus far in life, you've been able to do pretty solid. I mean, you said you're in your early 30s. You both have fantastic jobs, but you've done a great job of like building and accumulating assets. You guys were kind enough to share with us a net worth statement. We thought it'd be valuable to just kind of look at, okay, where are you guys today? To sort of level set for the audience. Uh, and what you can see is right now your total net worth is a little over $550,000, which is amazing for a couple in the early 30s. You currently have in cash about $60,000 or so, about 37,000 in savings accounts. And another 21, 22,000 dollars in I bonds. What, what, what made you do I bonds? Where'd that come from?

• 13:18Speaker 04

  So this is my first year out of residency and I need, and I had like, Really a surplus of cash and I bonds were like

• 13:25Brian Preston?

  This is back when that whole arbitrage, everybody was trying to get the nine to 10% of the I bonds.

• 13:32Speaker 04

  It was kind of my emergent two year investment to where I knew it'd be good for at least two years. And if I needed it in two years, I'd pull it out.

• 13:40Speaker 04

  So that's where that came from. So it's actually part of its mind, part of its our sons, you know?

• 13:44Speaker 03

  Okay, okay. How much of it is like earmarked for your son?

• 13:47Speaker 04

  Just half and half.

• 13:48Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 13:48Speaker 04

  But I mean, like, I mean, it's liquid.

• 13:51Brian Preston?

  I'm always the old man on the front porch that picks on things and I, Bo and I had a little debate on this because he was generous and let you put that under cash. I don't, I don't really consider that cash. I think that savings and that's why it did surprise me because y'all's income is very strong. Now, to your defense, and I even made Megan, one of our producers, go behind the scenes and do the math to check it. Cause I was like, there's no way they're living off of that, but you are, you're, you're very, that is three months bare bones of expenses, right? The savings accounts.

• 14:22Speaker 04

  I consider our, you know, there's different platforms of having emergency cash. And so I look at it as like our taxable account is also.

• 14:30Brian Preston?

  No, that's access, that's an access to cash.

• 14:33Speaker 04

  But I'm saying, I'm just, no, I'm just saying this, like, if I really am burning for, like, if, if we came into this crazy emergency, like, that's my, that's my mindset. You know?

• 14:42Brian Preston?

  My stomach dropped a little.

• 14:46Brian Preston?

  I don't know, you know, I wrote a book called Millionaire Mission.

• 14:48Speaker 04

  Haven't read it yet.

• 14:49Brian Preston?

  And in there, in there, now, but financial mutants all make this mistake. I made this mistake. This is why I know it's a trap and I, and I get worried for everybody out there that thinks if I just have a brokerage account, I can always get access to that. But I always, when it rains, it pours, meaning bad things happen in groups. Is that now you're, you're a doctor, so hopefully we're always. I don't hope we need doctors, but it's a reality. We'll need doctors. But a lot of times your real estate value will go down, your stock market value will go down, and the job market will get crushed, and it will happen all at the same time. There's not diversification when it comes to crisis. Cash, I know it's not sexy. I know it's not one of those things that gets people excited

• 15:33Brian Preston?

  that you're having this money sitting over here because you as a mutant think that I can maximize. But it's just, don't fall into that trap because when you go underwater in the emergency, you're going to crave oxygen, and that's what your cash reserves are. They are the oxygen you breathe. We all take it for granted while we're above water, but as soon as you go under, it is priceless. It really is.

• 15:54Speaker 04

  That's good advice, and we've sadly already had to like, last year had to dip into the whole thing almost.

• 15:58Speaker 03

  Right. And you see how quickly you can liquidate those assets, and especially if something bad happens and you do see the brokerage account go down. So you have about, depending on how you count it, somewhere between forty to sixty thousand dollars in cash. And then you both are doing great in terms of how you're accumulating retirement assets. Margot, your Roth has just under about sixty thousand dollars in it. Chuck, yours has right at sixty thousand two. You have a 403B that you're participating in, Chuck, that you have about ten thousand dollars in. I'm assuming is that a new account? That was just residency. That was just residency. That's an old account that's just kind of hanging out, all right? Your 401K, Chuck, has about a hundred and sixty-eight thousand dollars in it. Margot, you have a solo 401K with about fifty-six thousand.

• 16:41Speaker 03

  And then you guys do have an after-tax brokerage account with about twenty-two, two-hundred-and-twenty-two thousand dollars in there. So just one thing about the three tax buckets, you guys are doing a great job, right? It's almost like you listen to a financial show that really encourages building up six tax buckets, right? Ah, it's awesome. So we love seeing that. Obviously, that's a great place to be here in your early thirties. And then you do have your primary home valued at seven-hundred-and-thirty-five thousand dollars. And then there was an angel investment of eighty thousand dollars. What's that? Where'd that come from? What are the details on that?

• 17:12Speaker 04

  I'd kind of keep it superficial. Brother-in-law's business.

• 17:17Speaker 03

  Okay, so it's a family, a family business that you've.

• 17:19Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  Did you invest in, or it's like a family business that you're just participating in?

• 17:23Brian Preston?

  Or is that a loan?

• 17:24Speaker 04

  It's, no, it's, uh, well.

• 17:26Speaker 06

  We invested, but using money that I inherited.

• 17:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. Got it. Awesome. So it's a, it's a closely held family thing, not something you did outside. So it's kind of part of more estate planning deal going on with the family.

• 17:38Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, it's a big, it's a big company or business now and it's pretty.

• 17:43Brian Preston?

  So this is gonna pay off at some point, it sounds like.

• 17:45Speaker 04

  Well, it started, I mean, there's only probably, it's already paid at least likely fourfold, likely.

• 17:49Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 17:50Speaker 06

  Cause what did we invest in?

• 17:52Speaker 04

  Like low number 20.

• 17:53Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:53Speaker 03

  Oh, wow. That's great.

• 17:54Brian Preston?

  The value of it.

• 17:56Speaker 03

  This is the other side of the angel investment. That's a good, good for you guys.

• 17:59Brian Preston?

  Y'all are the opposite side of most, you know, family stories about loaning money or investing. It, it, it turns into a woeful tale. Yours is actually, um, angel investment's the right name for it. So we'll leave it at that.

• 18:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:12Speaker 03

  All right. And then now you also have, I'm gonna go through the debts first. You have a mortgage, uh, about $670,000 owed on that. And the interest rate is 3.88, which is wonderful. That's like a super low mortgage rate. There's a lot of people in the country right now that wishes that that was their mortgage rate. Uh, you do have student loans, currently about $74,000 of student loans remaining.

• 18:30Brian Preston?

  But, but put a pin in that. How big was that student? Cause you were in school forever. You didn't really get financial help after high school. I can't imagine you came out of medical school with a hundred thousand dollars of debt.

• 18:41Speaker 04

  No, it was 307.

• 18:43Speaker 03

  Wow. So you've paid down from 307,000 down to 74,000 by your early 30s.

• 18:48Speaker 04

  And we're at 54 now, cause I paid off lower 20 the last.

• 18:51Speaker 03

  Oh, wow. All right. Noted.

• 18:54Brian Preston?

  You got some meat on the bone for me because I have some things I'm gonna try to, I'm gonna try to encourage you on it. You're over here just going to town.

• 19:03Speaker 03

  Now, remind me again.

• 19:05Brian Preston?

  Crusading against that debt, obviously.

• 19:07Speaker 03

  Cause I wanna, I wanna know about that. What's the interest rate on the student loans presently?

• 19:10Speaker 04

  Well, that's the issue. It's nothing.

• 19:11Speaker 03

  Oh, it's zero percent?

• 19:12Speaker 04

  So it's a federal, this is all federal and the federal government's been in shambles for.

• 19:17Speaker 03

  So you're paying, I just wanna make sure I'm understanding, you're paying down zero percent interest debt?

• 19:20Speaker 04

  Hundred percent.

• 19:21Speaker 03

  Okay. Just wanna make sure that like there's zero percent interest.

• 19:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, zero percent.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  Okay, just making sure I'm getting that. Okay.

• 19:26Speaker 04

  And the loan, so the loan that you see there too, like that went towards that initial, like part of it went towards that in our home purchase.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 19:32Speaker 04

  And so like that's a.

• 19:34Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 19:35Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 19:35Brian Preston?

  So I can just sense it in your face Chuck, you know I'm gonna pick on you about this in a little bit.

• 19:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:40Brian Preston?

  It's kind of like, you know, when I got married, I bought a set of golf clubs because I knew my wife probably wasn't gonna let me make those type of purchases. I feel like you paid down that additional 20,000 on that that student loan because you knew I was gonna have questions.

• 19:54Speaker 04

  So, and like, I don't know if you follow, but like, so like, three months ago, right, they were accruing interest. And so now they're not.

• 19:59Brian Preston?

  What was your percentage on that?

• 20:00Speaker 04

  Like, average, like, a little over five.

• 20:02Speaker 03

  No, right around 5%.

• 20:03Speaker 04

  So.

• 20:04Speaker 03

  And you're in your early 30s.

• 20:04Brian Preston?

  And do you consider 5% high interest or low interest?

• 20:07Speaker 03

  No.

• 20:08Brian Preston?

  It's a low interest, isn't it?

• 20:09Speaker 04

  It's a big mental burden to me.

• 20:10Brian Preston?

  Okay, we're gonna talk about that.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, I love it. Mental burden sometimes can be incredibly expensive, right? And we're gonna dive into that. Uh, and then also, uh, so you said you have $150,000 outstanding loan at a 3.18% interest rate. So there's another piece of debt sitting out there.

• 20:24Brian Preston?

  But that's kind of unique, isn't it?

• 20:25Speaker 04

  Super unique. So it's, it was really like a sign on bonus. That's, it's forgivable.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 20:30Speaker 04

  After seven years and so, and the interest rates actually covered from the company. But I have to pay taxes on that 3.8.

• 20:38Speaker 03

  Oh, so it's imputed income to you.

• 20:40Brian Preston?

  It's more like a gold handcuff to keep you, keep you there.

• 20:42Speaker 04

  Like you read about where I work.

• 20:45Brian Preston?

  Is that taxable, is that 150?

• 20:47Speaker 04

  It's taxable, 50,000 alocot. So after five years, 50, six years, $1.50, then the seventh years, the fifth.

• 20:54Brian Preston?

  But that's what's also in that taxable account is you've just been keeping it in.

• 20:57Speaker 04

  No, no, that's, that went right to my loans. Except for like, like 115 of it went to my loans and then we used some of it for the house.

• 21:04Speaker 03

  Okay, awesome.

• 21:05Brian Preston?

  Cool.

• 21:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, pretty decent debt situation in terms of like, what's manageable right now? When you look at the total amount of debt you have relative to total amount of assets. And you do have some funds for the kids. You have about $75,000 in 529s. What, that's, uh, seems like a pretty substantial amount. How, where'd that come from?

• 21:21Speaker 06

  So that was a gift from my parents, from my grandparents, like, it's sort of worked in a way.

• 21:27Brian Preston?

  Doing the same thing that was done for you, that's great.

• 21:30Speaker 03

  Wonderful.

• 21:30Brian Preston?

  And we often say, you know, from a legacy building standpoint, I always say, memories over stuff. And also I think education is another thing. If you're a person that is blessed and has good resources, those are great things to kind of invest in the next generation for.

• 21:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 21:45Speaker 03

  And so when it comes to 529s and saving for college, are you thinking that, okay, one day we'll want to be able to pay for full education for our child? What, what are your thoughts on that?

• 21:56Speaker 04

  I think we're gonna have to sadly, just because of our income limit.

• 22:00Speaker 03

  You're gonna have to pay, I mean, but like you did not, you said you had to go out and get loans to pay for your education. Your education was paid for. Have you guys talked about as it relates to your kids? How do you want to navigate that?

• 22:09Speaker 06

  We haven't totally crossed that bridge because our child is too.

• 22:14Speaker 06

  I do think this is an area that like, we've shared our preferences with each other and it's my strong preference that we pay that. I felt like it was the biggest gift of my life that I didn't have loans around my education and that that was provided to me and I still had a job. I still had like important values in terms of working hard instilled in me and you know, still behaved in a way that was in line with those values like, and I think there's ways to instill those values without creating stress around debt. And correct me if I'm wrong, but my perspective is that he's more like, oh, well, like you want him

• 23:00Speaker 06

  to not like earn his education, but want him to be the one investing in his education. Yeah, yeah. And sort of be able to like, teach the values of hard work with the financial piece tied to those values. Whereas like to me, they can be more independent.

• 23:22Speaker 04

  I'm like, yeah, we haven't like, broken it down. I know there's a couple of different approaches. Like some parents like, say here's a loan and you know, make their kid feel like they're paying for it, but in the end it's going to be forgiven.

• 23:32Speaker 03

  Right, yeah.

• 23:34Speaker 04

  For me though, like I would like to cover it. I mean, like we have one child, like we have income where, and honestly, ideally, not to like rush ahead of this conversation, but like by the time the little guy is ready for college, I think I could be retired.

• 23:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, you might be financially independent at that point.

• 23:48Speaker 04

  And so like, I could work for another couple of years to help the little guy through school or something. You know what I mean? Like, so. Yeah, and who knows where our situation is going to be in a few years. I love it.

• 23:59Brian Preston?

  And there's still, there's a lot of runway on that for y'all to have more communication, figure it out. I think just naturally having that gift of paying it forward is going to do some pretty amazing things. Just because we do have a big runway, compounding interest is going to carry a lot of that. But we, we'll see if there's some way we can at least kind of find the intersection of both of y'all's desires. I did have one more question because this is a great to go over all this. But how do y'all handle your money? Are y'all joint? Are y'all separate accounts? How do, how do y'all handle that part of it? Because I didn't see, when I was looking at savings accounts, I didn't see separate savings accounts. You know, most of these retirement accounts, your government forces you to make those separate. I'm getting the feeling that y'all do everything joint.

• 24:41Speaker 04

  Everything's joint and also just for protection wise, like tenants by entirety for as much as we can.

• 24:47Brian Preston?

  Okay. Was there any discussion or any struggle on that? Or was that just always from the get go, you knew everything was going to be joint?

• 24:54Speaker 06

  No, we kind of always knew from the get go. I think it's been interesting because when we first met, like so, also for my graduate training, I was paid to go to graduate school. So I, I have a PhD, so they paid me rather than me paying them.

• 25:12Speaker 06

  So. The doctors.

• 25:17Speaker 06

  But, and so it was interesting because when we first got together, I was like the money maker, which is like laughable now because my income was not very high. But with that, like there was probably like for the first, you know, six years of our relationship or so, or four, four years of our relationship. Yeah, like I was the one who was like financially bringing more in. And then it switched, but for some reason I think that like. Sequence of events, it was just like, it makes financial sense for both of us.

• 25:56Speaker 03

  Level set, right?

• 25:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, to just come together.

• 25:59Brian Preston?

  And by the way, for young marriages, especially first marriages, y'all didn't have a lot of assets coming into the marriage. I love the merging everything together is because it takes the power out of the money as well. Now, look, we deal with, we've been doing this long enough. We have some complex situations which sometimes facilitate and require that we legally do some separate things, but I love it when couples get to kind of look at the assets together because it does, as you shared, you know, Margo, you made the most money in the beginning. Now we have Chuck making the most. It's nice that y'all are separating, I mean, sharing everything so nobody can say, who makes the money here? It's looked at as joint resources for both of you and that's very healthy.

• 26:39Speaker 03

  I do have one other question on the Net Worth Day, but there's an emergency fund for your child that has like $1,300 in there.

• 26:45Speaker 04

  Oh, no, that's not an emergency fund. That's just like me, like, I just put a hundred bucks a month away for the little guy.

• 26:50Speaker 03

  For like, first car?

• 26:52Speaker 04

  I don't even know, I just like, just, I don't know.

• 26:55Speaker 03

  I just a hundred bucks.

• 26:55Speaker 06

  Just investing in that kid.

• 26:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, just pouring it, I don't know. It's like, what do you leave us like, I don't know.

• 27:01Brian Preston?

  Chuck, I've done the same thing with both of my kids. Now, I have two daughters and I was always thinking this was to ward off a fight with my wife about weddings in the future.

• 27:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:09Brian Preston?

  Was that a hundred dollars a month? Didn't mean much, but it was going to turn into a large sum and it has worked out, by the way, those accounts are big. So, you know, maybe this is what's going to help your child get their first house or, I think it's a, that's not a bad thing.

• 27:22Speaker 04

  And I've also thought like, when we're talking about like, how do you want to set your kid up for the future, right? Like, the way she was raised or the way I was raised. And I keep thinking about this like UGMA account or something of that sort. And that's kind of my like temporary, I don't know, I'm going to do.

• 27:37Speaker 03

  Like you're doing that trying to figure out what you're going to do. You're doing something until you figure out the plan.

• 27:41Brian Preston?

  If that's not structured as one of those custodial accounts, you might want to consider it so you can take advantage of at least the tax benefits of the child's lower tax rate because uncles go like you a lot. You have a really good income, so you and the uncle, y'all are tight, so we ought to get some separation there on those assets.

• 27:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:58Speaker 03

  All right, so we know kind of your backstory and we did, you did a great job of kind of laying us out, laying for us out where you guys are today. What are your financial goals? We know where we are today. What's the ultimate thing that you guys want to work towards? Like, what are the goals that you guys sit down and discuss when you do have these super awesome financial days?

• 28:15Speaker 04

  Break it down into things like really, it's like, we just want to enjoy life.

• 28:17Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 28:18Speaker 04

  And so work-life balance is honestly like number one for us. And so.

• 28:22Speaker 03

  How's that now? Are you working all the time? Are you never working? How do y'all balance that presently?

• 28:27Speaker 06

  We're getting there, I think. Um, we, you know, didn't finish up our training that long ago. Started in to a job. Um, I started into a job that work-life balance was not workable for me at all with a newborn, um, ended up leaving that job, um, and like pivoting into more of the private sector.

• 28:57Speaker 06

  And then we got just like slammed in 2024 by like a bunch of health things. And like, it was just a really, really tough year for us. Um, and so I've kind of been like really up and down in terms of like what I've been able to do in terms of work, managing the baby, managing like my own self.

• 29:19Speaker 06

  So I definitely feel like there's room for growth for me in terms of work-life balance that I feel like I, right now, we were just talking about this this morning, actually. Um, that like the content of what I'm doing, I love. And also like, I don't know, I feel like maybe there's like more earning potential for me. On the one hand, on the other hand, like it's extremely important to me that like, what matters to me on a day-to-day basis has become very clear to me this year. And like, it's extremely important to me that I tick those boxes each day.

• 29:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:53Speaker 06

  Um, and that includes things like spending time with Chuck and our son and moving my body and doing like a leisure activity and doing meaningful work. So like, I'm trying to balance.

• 30:05Speaker 03

  How do you balance all that together?

• 30:07Speaker 06

  Figuring all of that with also like earning an income that I feel like is. Representative of like my education and what I have to offer. I he can speak to his, but like briefly, I'll speak to his.

• 30:25Speaker 06

  But he found a job that has amazing work-life balance and that like really like. It really is and like his hours are amazing. He is compensated really well. The one thing is that there's not that much like intellectual flexibility in the job, which gets to him because he's like the type of person whose brain is always like, like we have invention books in our house, like all the things.

• 30:56Speaker 03

  It's not challenging for you. It's kind of like a clock in, clock out type thing.

• 30:59Speaker 04

  I'm not trying anesthesia. I do outpatient anesthesiaology. So like, things happen. Like, I'm not trying to like down talk being an anesthesiologist. It's a, you know, very like mind. It requires a lot of brain power throughout the day. But I like am always trying to improve things. I'm always trying to like change things, optimize. And so for me, like sitting in the OR does not allow that pathway. You know what I mean? So like I'm, that's like the one thing that I'm, I'm, I'm currently in some really cool opportunities to like, you know, with leadership and like trying to create different projects. But it's just, it's just a long process with the group I work for. Which is, I think that's part of the case everywhere. So like, yeah, the mental stimulation, I'm, that's what I'm hoping for, for work.

• 31:42Speaker 04

  But honestly, like at this point in life, like, I'll be honest, I love work. I love my job. I could see myself working forever, but I also love so much more than work.

• 31:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 31:51Speaker 06

  So hobby guy.

• 31:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm a hobby guy and my work allows that. Like I get out most days by three thirty. And so like, you know, if they're at seven or six thirty, but like, I'm on at three thirty. I can go take care of myself or go take care of the kid or hang out with the wife. Like, I mean, there's so many things that I can do and I have no call or no weekend. It's like, I literally am.

• 32:09Brian Preston?

  Wow. You're like, you break through all the things that you hear bad about being a doctor.

• 32:14Speaker 04

  I have an insane job.

• 32:15Speaker 03

  So how do you, how do you tie a financial goal to enjoy life, have more work-life balance? Is that just a matter of getting lifestyle as down as low as possible? If we can live off of $2,000 a month, then we can have all the work-life balance we want? Or what's the financial connection there to being able to do that?

• 32:32Speaker 04

  I think it's a good question, right? Cause I think it brings up like, what is your, yeah, like down the road, like where do you, where do you want to be?

• 32:37Brian Preston?

  Yeah, what's your why?

• 32:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, and so for me, like at this point, I want to save so I can actually have financial independence. Like, I don't care about the retire early part. I just want financial independence like within 15 years. But at the same time, I want to have the opportunity to guarantee setting aside this money side, but then spend freely, do things freely. Meaning, you know, we're trying to plan a trip to Europe this year for three weeks, which I already have the vacation set, so now we're just really just figuring out what we want to do.

• 33:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:05Speaker 04

  And so like, that's like really step two for us is like family time, work-life balance, and then like really traveling, like we want to start traveling.

• 33:13Speaker 03

  Love it.

• 33:13Speaker 04

  And so I think creating the avenues to do that and like, that's, and that's what, we haven't done this before. So like I, this is a new thing for us is like, how, how do we create like securment with finances from what I'm making to put it towards trips, to put it towards our goals?

• 33:31Speaker 03

  Do you have a number, like you said, financial independence in 15 years? Have you defined what that is? Like, what is financial independence for you guys? Do you know the answer?

• 33:38Speaker 04

  I mean, I'm like roughly shooting for like 200,000 of income annually.

• 33:43Speaker 03

  200,000 of income.

• 33:44Speaker 04

  So roughly 5 million.

• 33:46Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 33:47Speaker 04

  Well, that's, that, yeah, but like, obviously I'm open to be educated. That's like my.

• 33:52Brian Preston?

  That's pretty standard. I think most people, cause you hear all the time, you know, a million's not what it used to be. Well, I say, well, what do you think? If I ask, if I push people on what are you really looking for? It usually falls into that three to five million. So I think you're, you're, you're in solid ground there of what people consider financially comfortable. Also, Margo, you said something. You talked about that you had some health struggles yourself. And in my brain, I immediately is like, I always like to share with people, money's just a tool. And it sounds like, you know, you had some clarity from trauma yourself. So, and, and, and that's what I always tell people, health is wealth too. And it's better to kind of. Get that education, especially with a life education, especially with your son, you know,

• 34:37Brian Preston?

  and you get this clarity. So I, I, I just can sense that you have some peace about the fact that the, the money doesn't matter as much now that you get to, to spend the time and, and do these things.

• 34:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. And I'm lucky. I enjoy the work I do. So I don't like, I'm happy to keep working. I want to be able to, for me, I think there's a balance between setting us up for financial independence, which I know is really important to him.

• 35:03Brian Preston?

  Right.

• 35:04Speaker 06

  Um, but also living our lives now in a way that like is comfortable and is in line. Like I am not on board. I'm not on the like, live $2,000 a month or whatever it is, like, you know.

• 35:20Speaker 04

  That's not the idea of financial independence.

• 35:22Speaker 06

  No, like, we're not like, sacrifice everything now so that, you know, we can live it up later. We're like, how can we live it up now and?

• 35:31Speaker 04

  And later.

• 35:34Brian Preston?

  How do you feel about that though Chuck? Cause I mean, you said, I get the feeling that you're more of a scarcity bracer.

• 35:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:40Brian Preston?

  And you, it sounds like y'all live around family and you're, you're, you know, you're doing things. Do you feel like sometimes that y'all are doing too much or trying to keep up with the Joneses? How do you, where's, where, how do you feel about all this?

• 35:53Speaker 04

  So I think when we initially moved to the East Coast, yes, keep up the Joneses is like real. Like, and for sure. And we've, we've definitely caught up with parts of the Joneses.

• 36:02Speaker 06

  But also when you move somewhere, right? There are tons of costs of moving. Like, it's just an expensive time. And we moved from a place that was less expensive to a place that's more expensive. So that doesn't help.

• 36:14Speaker 04

  But, um, I mean, overall, I've kind of loosened the purse strings as long as I'm meeting that like, you know, 30% gross income investment is like what our, our goal is. Okay. And so if I, if we meet that, I don't care. Like I'll be honest, like, I don't care where the money goes. And if it just like all of a sudden disappears, like I. That's the beautiful part about pay yourself first. You give yourself the freedom to spend after you've done your saving. I think that sounds.

• 36:37Brian Preston?

  Are you a pain spender? I mean, it would, maybe I'll ask this of Margot. Do you find that he's tight? Do you feel like he's tight? Or is he really letting go of the purse strings like he just said?

• 36:47Speaker 06

  I think.

• 36:47Brian Preston?

  Don't worry. I mean, we can tell he's a great guy.

• 36:51Brian Preston?

  But, but we're trying to help him.

• 36:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. No, I'm not worried about offending him. I'm, I'm trying to think of like how to capture.

• 37:00Speaker 06

  Him in words.

• 37:03Speaker 06

  Um, he agonizes over every purchase. So like, at the end of the day, he will buy the thing or get the thing. And usually it's like what he said, I'll be like, buy it, buy it. But he, the like inner turmoil that he experiences for every decision. And it can be something that's like, you know, not that 150 bucks is trivial, but like, it's not like a major, major. Yeah, it's not a life changing amount and he just agonizes. I don't know if that answers your question.

• 37:43Brian Preston?

  We talk about majoring in the minor sometimes is you and we were, look, forever I said I was a tightwad. But I got to a point in my life where I was like, this isn't healthy, you know? And, and also I started feeling guilty that I was, this was my part of my persona. And then once I started loosening up because the money was starting to work longer. Now, look, we're going to get in a minute that you're also at the beginning. So I don't want you to feel like you can loosen this too much.

• 38:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:08Brian Preston?

  But I do want to give you all permission is that once you do the things that are on the financial priority checklist, it should also give you permission to enjoy your money because it's back to money's only a tool. And that's why I love creating a financial plan or a system that lets you know you're checking the box. But then you can free your mind to say, look, I'm doing everything to reach these goals. But also know that there's going to reach a point where I can't take it with me. So we've got to balance so we don't have regrets about the, did we leave our, you know, did we live our twenties, our thirties, the best possible way? So we don't have regrets when we're in our fifties and sixties and we can't even do as much as we thought.

• 38:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, okay, so I'm hearing these goals, enjoy life, work, life balance, financial independence in 15 years. I want to travel. What else? What other financial goals do you guys have?

• 38:56Speaker 06

  Again, for me, like education for.

• 38:59Speaker 03

  Education for your son.

• 39:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 39:01Speaker 04

  And like down, I mean, if the opportunity arose like for future generations too.

• 39:05Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 39:06Speaker 03

  Potentially larger family type stuff, right?

• 39:10Speaker 03

  Awesome.

• 39:10Speaker 04

  And I think gifting to us is important. I think.

• 39:15Speaker 04

  I find that we spend freely. If friends are in need, if anyone's in need, we just kind of throw money.

• 39:20Speaker 03

  Being able to help other people out.

• 39:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:22Brian Preston?

  Be generous.

• 39:23Speaker 04

  Generous.

• 39:23Speaker 06

  And I think down the line, like more substantially like giving to organizations and stuff like that will be important to us.

• 39:34Speaker 03

  It's, it's interesting. I did not hear.

• 39:36Brian Preston?

  Here we go.

• 39:37Speaker 03

  Be debt free.

• 39:38Brian Preston?

  Yeah.

• 39:38Speaker 03

  Like, like I didn't hear like, hey, oh, get my student loans paid off. Hey, get out of the, knock this stuff out. That will.

• 39:43Brian Preston?

  I love that Chuck, Chuck looks like he's, he's being held under a ransom. Whenever we talk about this stuff, do you, do you see his eyes cut over?

• 39:51Speaker 04

  Well, so because before today, like I have, like, I had that planned already.

• 39:54Speaker 03

  Like, I guess. It's a foregone conclusion.

• 39:55Speaker 04

  Until I meet you guys and then I'm like, what do I do now?

• 39:59Speaker 04

  So for me, it's like, I already have the year planned out finances. And so like, I mean, I'm, obviously I'm open to suggestions of improvement. And to me though, it's like by the end of the year, my, my debt's going to be gone except for the house, which to me, I'm not too worried about the house.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 40:15Brian Preston?

  Can, can I ask you one question though, is opportunity cost, you know, because everything in life is an incremental decision. Do you go left? Do you go right? And, you know, and those small, small little decisions that you don't feel like really mean much, sometimes can have huge impacts. And so do you think about that at all? Or is that just get the debt paid off and, and that's it?

• 40:35Speaker 04

  I mean, I do, I do, but like, I guess if I looked on the long run, if I'm saving 30% or whatever, I mean, you know, like, and I guess that's the issue too, that I'm looking into is I, my 30% savings also includes.

• 40:48Speaker 03

  Includes all that debt payoff.

• 40:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, for the year. And so I know in the long run, yes, it's, it's going to hurt a little bit, but I guess the question is how much? If I'm paying off my debt in two and a half, three years.

• 40:55Speaker 03

  What a great question. What a wonderful question. How, how significant? Cause you were so kind. You said, I've kind of got my whole year planned, planned now.

• 41:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:03Speaker 03

  And you kind of prepared for us. Like, hey, here's my financial order of operations that I'm working through. And it was great. So we were able to look at it. Okay. Hey, I've currently got my cash covered. My emergency fund is good. I've got my three months of expenses. Mm-hmm. We're at the income level. We can't contribute to Ross directly, but we have an account structure that allows us to do backdoor Ross. We're each doing that, 7,000 and 7,000. And we're maxing on our retirements between the 401K, between the two 401Ks. We have 23,5 each going into the 401Ks. We're saving 47,000 there. So that's great. Well, in addition to that, I've got this 100 bucks a month that's going into my son's account. We call it an emergency fund because we didn't know what it was. Going into my son's account. And then we're going to pay off the student loan. So 76,000 of our dollars are going to flow into the student loans

• 41:48Speaker 03

  to knock them out this year. And you asked the perfect question. Well, why doesn't that make sense? Isn't getting out of debt a good thing? Isn't that noble? Is it significant? Well, we kind of, in everything that we do, we like to think about optimization. How are we making the absolute best financial decisions that we can make that align with the long-term goals that we have? And when I read your goals again, I hear enjoy life, have work-life balance, have financial independence. I did not hear be debt-free as soon as possible, get out of these student loans. And yet you are prioritizing that as though it is like a super high goal of yours. Mm-hmm.

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• 43:03Speaker 03

  So we thought, okay, well, what if we laid out sort of what you're currently doing to build towards your goals with what we would probably recommend you change or some things that you think about that might have some impact on your financial life. So we wanted to lay it next to our FU, our recommended financial order of operations. And the first thing that we think is that immediately, we think your cash reserve should probably be higher than it is now. Right now, you have about $30,000, $40,000 in cash. We would like to see you add another $34,000 in that, taking it to about $60,000. So that way, you have liquid cash, five or six month of current of current living expenses in a high yield money market that you get to tomorrow, in the event that something happened that you got to. Off the

• 43:45Speaker 03

  table, is that, is it, is it going to drive you crazy to take $34,000 and put it in a high yield account instead of put it on those student loans?

• 43:52Speaker 04

  No, because, no, because, no, I'll say no.

• 43:55Speaker 03

  He hasn't seen the rest of it, though. I mean, there's gonna be more here. All right, so let's keep going. So then next, after you do that, we love you doing the backdoor Roths. We want to see you guys continue to do that. If you guys, especially income, can take advantage of tax-free opportunities, you ought to do that. We still want you to max out your retirement accounts, 23.5 for each of you. But there is one thing that is incredibly interesting and intriguing about specifically your retirement plan. Inside of your retirement plan, you've probably noticed there are three different ways you can contribute. You can do traditional pre-tax contribution. You can do a Roth contribution. Then yours has that unique, magical after-tax contribution. And whenever your plan allows

• 44:37Speaker 03

  for an after-tax 401k contribution, there's some really exciting savings opportunities there. Again, you were kind enough to share with us that, hey, based on the way that my plan is tested every year, I have the ability, I can do, in addition to the 23.5, I can do another $19,000 into the after-tax contribution portion of my 401k. Well, if you were to contribute to that, that then gives you an opportunity to convert those dollars or do an in-service rollover of 19,000 into a Roth IRA. So instead of just being able to put $7,000 a year in your Roth, you could do 7,000 plus another 19,000.

• 45:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:13Speaker 03

  That's sounds pretty

• 45:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:15Speaker 03

  significant, right?

• 45:16Speaker 04

  She has that opportunity too. And like, when she starts making enough money, her solo 401k has that. Built into it too, and we need to.

• 45:23Speaker 03

  So then the question becomes, okay, well, how powerful is that? How much does that matter? How significant is that? So we said, okay, well, let's just take this one single year. This one single year, if I just do a $19,000 contribution into mega backdoor Roth, how impactful, if I'm 34, how impactful can that be over the remainder of my life? And you can see that if we assume an 8.6% rate of return, and that's just assuming, again, mid 30s, 8.5% seems reasonable. Just that singular contribution by the time you're 50 could be worth $75,000. By the time that you're 55, it could be worth 115,000. By the time you're 60, it'd be worth $176,000.

• 46:07Speaker 03

  So every year that you are able to do that could be almost another $200,000 in that financial independence bucket. And so when we look at opportunities you have available to you, paying off the debt sounds great, but if you pay off a 0% interest debt, do you know how much interest you save?

• 46:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, a lot.

• 46:25Speaker 03

  0%, right? Like, that's the... So, okay, let me pause there for a moment. Give me some thoughts, feedback. Oh, I already know this, guys. Oh, this is silly. Oh, that's insignificant. Well, tell us more what you're thinking.

• 46:38Speaker 04

  I am just... I mean, it makes... I understand. Like, it makes 100% sense. Because like last year, I didn't... So the first year I started working at the job, I did do the backdoor.

• 46:47Speaker 03

  Right.

• 46:48Speaker 04

  Mega backdoor. And then I started... The debt started, or the interest rates started coming again. So I was like, I want to pay this off.

• 46:54Speaker 03

  Sure. Is there any chance? And obviously, if your employer's watching, you want to work there forever, obviously. But there's a chance that your job could change. You could move somewhere else. How about weighing in the opportunity cost of, yo, yeah, I can't just do the mega backdoor. What if you change jobs? Or maybe the plan changes and all of a sudden that opportunity's not there anymore?

• 47:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's real.

• 47:12Speaker 03

  Now you've missed out on $19,000 of tax-free money that you... Brent, have you ever in your life not put money in tax-free that you regret it later on?

• 47:21Brian Preston?

  Well, that's what I'm sitting over here. Because, by the way, we did you a favor by only cutting it off at 60. I guarantee if we added another five years... Because you know how compounding growth works is the longer you add compounding growth, and I'll go ahead and just ruin it for you. Your favorite investment? Basket is going to be Roth. You know why we love Roth assets? They're completely tax-free. They grow tax-free. The government doesn't get to put that horrible tax rate that they're hitting all of your income at on those Roth assets. So if you took this out to 65, because you would still own it at 65, it's going to be closer to 300,000. What I'm worried about for you though Chuck is that you're so close to leaving the, you know, school and the pain of having that $300,000 of debt,

• 48:03Brian Preston?

  that that's all you see. You have some recency bias towards the debt. I think you're going to fast-forward and you're going to resemble me a little bit more and have some regrets from, you know, missing out on some of this tax-free stuff. And that's why I came up with an analogy. Now, I don't know if this is going to hit perfect. I even told Bo, I'm scared. I came up with something. I love, in my, in my spare time, I have a hobby where I love to, to smoke meat. Okay. You know, if you barbecue, and do you know what the secret to barbecue? Because you know, barbecue is really taking subpar meat and turning it into something that, there's a reason there's so many barbecue restaurants in the South. Do you know what the secret to, to cooking these subpar meats is? Teach me. Low and slow. You have to, you have to keep the temperature low and then you have to give

• 48:47Brian Preston?

  them enough time that they break down the fat and, and turn it into this awesome piece of meat that people pay extra for and wait hours in line to get the best briskets and the pork butts and all the other stuff that's out there. But there's a mistake that early barbecue people make that I'm worried you're doing is a debt crusader. Is a lot of times when people get their, their brisket or their butts, they, they immediately start trimming the fat, as much fat as they can, because you know, we've all been served a steak or something with a lot of gristle. We know we don't want that. So we think it's good to cut off as much fat as possible. Yeah. And I think you were suffering from that with your debt. You're like, hey, yeah, I came out of school with $300,000 of debt. That felt suffocating.

• 49:31Brian Preston?

  But now you've got this thing paid down to, at the time we got the notes, it was 74. Now you're still out there just trimming away at that fat as fast as you can. And I'm over here as the, the senior barbecue pit master. And I'm like, quit cutting the fat off of this thing because you realize part of what you need is because low and slow. Now, did you guys graduate from medical school like Doogie Howser in your early twenties? No. No. You graduate. So do you think you're ahead or behind on time? Oh, way behind. For investing. You're behind. Yeah, yeah. And that's why, we even have a slide on, we took your income and we built in, now, look, and this is not to say you're doing anything wrong, but it is one of those things where because you are older, because you've been in school for a million years, getting all

• 50:16Brian Preston?

  these doctorates and everything, which is good. It's very good. Don't hit me with, but it's just you need to have this pressure of not only getting out of debt, but also making sure your money works for you. Because, without a doubt, you have the income, your shovel, both of y'all, your income is going to accomplish a lot of goals if you give it enough time. But you're still at the beginning of this, so you're acting like you can maintain wealth that you don't even have. You've got to make the wealth before you can maintain the wealth, and especially when you find out the interest rate is somewhere between 0% and 5%, and then you see that you're, you're not even an average accumulator of wealth based upon where your income is and the amount of time, you should feel a little

• 50:58Brian Preston?

  pressure. It's kind of like you're starting your own barbecue, but you already started this three hours, four hours later than you should have put the meat on the low and slow flame. So we already have to kick up the temperature to just try to speed this thing along. You've cut all the fat off of this thing, so it's going to be the most unflavorful brisket you've ever tasted in your life. And I just worry that you're going to, when we pull this thing out of the oven, because you didn't give it enough time, that you're going to have some regrets. And that's why, and, look, I detailed this in Millionaire Mission, not the barbecue part, but, but, but just-

• 51:30Speaker 06

  You should have put that in there. That's amazing.

• 51:32Brian Preston?

  I have my own regrets. But it is something that I worry about for you, is that right now, you are just, you think you're doing the right thing by paying off this debt. And it is noble to pay off the debt, but I'm like, leave a little fat on there, so that we can focus on the time component and let your money get in there and do the heavy lift for you as fast as possible. And that's why when we were doing show prep, or planning for today's show and our content meetings, I was like, I see so much opportunity, but there's, it's the Jedi Master in me is just like, gosh, I just need him to, to use all that energy. You're doing the hard work, the discipline. The saving and investing or the idea of having enough margin of 30% in your life, where you didn't build up your living expenses is like an incredible superpower that's just

• 52:17Brian Preston?

  not being unleashed because you're sending, if you go back to that list of our funding, of their funding objectives, their foo, I mean, look at the biggest number on there was student loans. Seventy, it's like 76,000 of 138. You're not really investing 30% of your income. You're investing like 13, 14% and then the rest is going towards 0% debt. And I'll, look, I'm trying to be debt free as fast as possible, but I'm in the maintain wealth, which I think is the right time to do it. Don't do this before you get to the made it through the make wealth phase. And y'all are still in the make wealth. Okay.

• 52:54Speaker 03

  Now, I do want to, I want to go back to the last illustration, make sure we understand how this was calculated because essentially what we do is we take your age times your income and divide that by 10 plus the number of years in the hit 40. That's how we determine like where you should be from an accumulation standpoint. So if you're going to be an average accumulator based on y'all's income, you should have about $977,000 invested presently, but the income is a relatively new thing and you guys were in school for a long time. We actually want you to be a for digits accumulator, which would be double the average. So our goal for where you should be based on your income would be around $2 million invested. So that's the point that he's making with the amazing barbecue analogy, by the way.

• 53:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, well done.

• 53:32Speaker 03

  Is that you do have to make up for a bit of lost time. And when we think about making up for lost time, optimization becomes incredibly important. So that's why we think about our financial order of operations. We would love for you to then do the mega backdoor conversion and then begin contributing to the after tax account because after we get through this year, you won't have to fill up your emergency fund anymore. So you're going to have a lot of money you're able to plow into after tax 401k contribution or after tax 401k as well as after tax brokerage accounts. And then once you've done those things, then we think we can hit some of the other goals that you may have, like funding a 529. We estimated and we'll show you kind of how we thought through this, maybe doing like $5,000 a year to the 529s based on some

• 54:13Speaker 03

  of the goals you laid out between like private K through 12 as well as paying for college one day. So that if you can replicate this, you'll actually end up with the same cash outflow, right? You're right now, you're already planning on $140,000 flowing out. If you were just going to match and replicate that. This is the way that we would suggest you approach that.

• 54:34Brian Preston?

  Okay. Can I make one more point? And I, I promise I won't belabor this.

• 54:37Speaker 03

  I hope this has to do with barbecue.

• 54:39Brian Preston?

  No, no, it doesn't, it doesn't. Because it'll just make me hungry. But you see that six months in cash? To catch you up to your six months, you know, it's 34. That's, that's a one-off thing. So meaning that for next year, so next to the following year, if we fast forward to 2026, that 34,000 is now going to be kind of part of your discretionary pot. You know, to do what, do what you will with. Do you know what is not something that you have discretion on? Those mega backdoor Roth conversions? The government's only lets you, you can't go back in time. You, you just can't. So, I mean, I'm not even telling you not to pay off your debt. I'm just saying in due time. You know, just don't look back and go, remember I could have put 19? And then maybe this year it's 19, but then next year you do another 19.

• 55:22Brian Preston?

  You know that, I mean, this is the magical part of compounding. If you, if you see the power of this so much that you give a hundred dollars a month to your, to your son? But you're not going to put 19,000 into a Roth account that can turn into millions upon millions? I'm blinded, you know, I'm blinded. It's just like, oh my gosh. Take it from the old guy who's been there and has his regrets. Please, please do this because you will, you will, you will thank yourself. Your 50-year-old version is going to have these sloppy, wet tears because they're so happy you did this for the Roth assets. They really will. I appreciate it.

• 55:54Speaker 03

  But then there's the, okay, there's the so what? Like that's all the theory. Let's talk about the actual numbers of this because we wanted to decide, define for, okay, if I do this, if we actually were to save in this way and build in this way, what does our portfolio path look like? Like what are we ultimately building towards when we do this? And we said, what if you guys just earned a very conservative rate of return? 6% per year? And we looked at your portfolio, you have a relatively aggressive portfolio. It's making better than an annualized rate of return of 6%. But if we just went really conservative and you guys saved at this threshold, starting at age 34 with $575,000, saving $140,000 a year in the way that we described, without pay raises, without bonuses, without saving more than that.

• 56:36Speaker 03

  By the time you get to 50, we have you right at that $5 million number that you threw out. If you decide to work until 55, you can see it's 7 and 1/2 million. If you go all the way until 60, you can see that now you're a deck of millionaires. Based on, and by the way, when you get to that level, if we were to back down in today's dollars, assuming a 3% inflation rate, we believe that a $10 million portfolio when you guys turn 60 would be the equivalent of a little over $200,000 a year in today's income. That's inflation adjusted. So that's pretty incredible. Without everybody into the principal. So you start retirement with 10 million, you pull that off every year. When you leave this earth, you leave behind $10 million. Pretty exciting, right? But if you're gonna compress your timeline, if you said, I want

• 57:21Speaker 03

  to be financially independent, I want to hit 5 million, I want to do that in 15 years, you gotta be serious about what you're doing with your dollars and how you're optimizing the dollars. Now, you already said to us, optimization is something that, that matters to you, right? Isn't that, you said that, I'm sure your words, right? Yeah, no, that's like, yeah. And so one of the things you think through was like, hey, every decision I make, I want it to be the best. Would you be okay if we kinda shared with you some things that we noticed when we kinda looked at your portfolio? I feel mean. No, this is a, this is a

• 57:52Speaker 04

  That's why he, that's why he signed us up for this.

• 57:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. Look, you were kind enough to share with us your account statements, to share with us your investments, and, and that was wonderful. And so one of the things that we like to do is we like to do an illustration called Jigsaw Puzzle, right? Where we basically look at, how is your asset allocation broken down across all of the different accounts that you have? So, the way this is laid out is, every column is an individual account that you guys own. And rather than showing the individual securities, we just grouped all of your holdings by asset class to show you what types of asset classes you're holding in which types of accounts. So you have fixed income investments, you have some alternative investments like real estate, you have a big blended investment, a target retirement fund, you've got large cap holdings, small cap holdings, international holdings.

• 58:41Speaker 03

  So not only do we have to think about the asset allocation, how you spread your assets out, which by the way, doesn't look bad. We analyze that too. And if you look at your pie chart, you can see you have a pretty aggressive portfolio, which would be appropriate and fitting for someone in their early 30s. Now, you do have this big target retirement fund that you're using, and that's fine. We love that. But we would argue like, part of your portfolio is target retirement, but the other part is sort of specialized. And so you're kind of living in both worlds.

• 59:07Brian Preston?

  Yeah, you're getting to the point of graduating beyond the target retirement. So we can fine tune this.

• 59:12Speaker 04

  And the thing that I had a struggle with though, is that I had to pay like a 0.3% annual fee for that.

• 59:17Brian Preston?

  Right.

• 59:18Speaker 04

  Which was like, yeah, which was like 0.3%.

• 59:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, all right. Fair enough. So, but okay, we'll put a pin in that.

• 59:26Speaker 04

  I know, I know.

• 59:29Speaker 03

  Okay, so you have a good asset allocation, but not only do we think about how you allocate your, if you are going to move away from target retirements, which you've done with the majority of your portfolio. Not only do you think, need to think about how you allocate your assets, you need to think about how you locate them. Like where, what types of investments do I hold in what types of accounts? Now, when we saw this, there was some like, there was one like flashing red, Danger Will Robinson frightening thing that we saw. Can you guess what it was when you look at this?

• 59:57Speaker 04

  I'm guessing the Roth.

• 59:58Speaker 03

  It was the Roths. So when we look at both of your Roths, you both have $60,000 in Roths. And one of the reasons why we love Roths is they have tax-free growth. Whatever money grows in there is tax-free.

• 1:00:09Brian Preston?

  So what do you probably want if it's tax-free? What do you want to happen in that account?

• 1:00:13Speaker 04

  You want it to grow.

• 1:00:14Speaker 03

  As much as possible.

• 1:00:15Brian Preston?

  We want to pour some accelerator on that bad boy. Let it grow.

• 1:00:20Speaker 03

  But when we look at your holdings inside of your Roth, you both have about $20,000 inside of the fixed income piece, like the bond piece.

• 1:00:29Brian Preston?

  And by the way, we're not a good bonds. Just bonds in a Roth. That's a bowl of choice.

• 1:00:34Speaker 04

  I was trying to like tax inefficient funds in a.

• 1:00:38Speaker 03

  Anyways. Yeah. That's what I was trying to get at. Tax inefficient funds inside of retirement accounts. But if you're going to do that, it really makes a lot of sense to have tax inefficient funds like bonds inside of pre-tax retirement accounts, like traditional, because the Roth is tax-free forever. You want to have your maximum growth opportunities there. So generally speaking, when you look at Roths, you want to have like your heavy equity pieces in there, like the pieces that are going to have the largest amount of growth. Well, you have a lot of equity pieces, but when we look at your next largest allocation, and we're just going to use Margot's Roth as an example, you have a big chunk, about $22,000 in a REIT fund. And we like real estate, and it seems like you have taken the position, I think real

• 1:01:20Speaker 03

  estate is an attractive opportunity, so much so that I should hold it in my Roth. Am I describing that well? Correct. Okay. So when we think about how we allocate Roths and how we locate, we want to do what we call probabilistic allocation. I want to put the thing that has the highest probability of having the best return over the longest amount of time, right? When I look at your allocation, it looks like there's a big probabilistic scenario that you think real estate is going to perform really, really well over the long term, and then the next highest allocation would be fixed income. So we said, okay, if we were to back test this, how's fixed income done, those two holdings, your US, the Schwab US Aggregate Bond Index and the Short Term Inflation Protected Bond Fund, how have they done over the recent memory? And so we actually charted that out. We did over 10 years.

• 1:02:05Speaker 03

  And you can see over the last 10 years. That's over the last 10 years. Over the last 10 years, you can see that the annualized return for the Inflation Protected Fund is about 2.3%, and the Aggregate Bond Index about 0.8%. So not wonderful inside of a Roth, right? Like that's, again, don't mishear us. We like bonds, we like fixed income, we think they have a place in a portfolio, that place just might not be inside your Roth. Okay. But this wasn't your largest allocation. Your largest allocation was across this REIT ETF. And by the way, we love real estate. It's a wonderful diversifier, it helps combat inflation, it's a great holding. But when we pulled your REIT holding to say, okay, well, how has it performed?

• 1:02:44Speaker 03

  Over the last 10 years, annualized, it too, has about a 2.8% annualized return over the last 10 years. Again, this is inside of your Roth, inside of like, the bucket of assets that you want to be the best performing, because you really want to maximize your growth.

• 1:02:59Brian Preston?

  Do you want to see the mean part?

• 1:03:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, break it up.

• 1:03:02Brian Preston?

  The mean part is, we're going to show you, because you actually have it in your account. I mean, if you, because, but, but, the large cap, which is just basically buying the index of the economy, this ever-evolving innovation world that we live in, it would average close to 16% a year.

• 1:03:17Speaker 03

  So, these are all holdings that you hold inside your portfolio. And we're not suggesting that you should not hold any one of these holdings. What we are suggesting is that if you're thinking about optimization, where you put them matters. Because can you imagine if inside of your Roth, instead of annualizing 2.8% across the largest holding, you were annualizing almost 16% across the largest holding over the last 10 years?

• 1:03:40Brian Preston?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:40Speaker 03

  You can imagine how that compounds from now until you hit age 40, 45, 50, 55, so on and so forth.

• 1:03:48Brian Preston?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:49Speaker 03

  Have you thought about portfolio construction this way? I mean, walk us through when you go make your portfolio decisions, how, how do you navigate that?

• 1:03:55Speaker 04

  So, I consider the taxable account like a legacy fund, because we kind of started that when we met, pretty much, from inheritance. And then, in regards to allocation, was more based on like, tax efficient versus inefficient, you know, allocation, and the fact that I wasn't willing to spend 0.3% on my, on my 401K.

• 1:04:19Brian Preston?

  Right.

• 1:04:19Speaker 04

  And like, and honestly, like, you know, we've only been doing this for two and a half years now. So, like, really, a lot of this is like a, really, a learning. But like, I'm trying to do tax inefficient, inefficient, like, in a good way. But obviously, I knew that my Roth was like.

• 1:04:33Speaker 03

  There's something special about it, but what's special?

• 1:04:35Speaker 04

  But I mean, I knew, like, I knew, I was like, why can I not, how can I get? These tax inefficient funds in a better place in my Roth, but I couldn't like figure out how, like where?

• 1:04:45Brian Preston?

  Right.

• 1:04:46Speaker 04

  And obviously that's like busting into our 401Ks.

• 1:04:48Brian Preston?

  I'm gonna go ahead and play the part of Oracle and tell you what's gonna happen in the future too. Even if you'd paid that 0.3% to the advisor to that 401K, what account do you think they're gonna look at? Only that 401K? Do you think they're gonna look at your taxable account?

• 1:05:01Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, no, no, no.

• 1:05:02Brian Preston?

  That's the problem, because I don't know if we can pull up your tax location. If you look at your three buckets. You guys actually have a really nice mix of, and if we played this forward, it's pretty nice. I mean, most people, what's funny is everybody has, just like we all have fingerprints, everybody's allocation is different. When people show up and come through the door as a prospect, we have to take them where they are. And I would be excited when I saw your three buckets, because this is kind of what you daydream about is because you have a nice mix of all three. And just, we didn't share it earlier completely. Beau gave you everybody, you know, tips and tricks, but I want to go ahead and cut everybody off of the pass so they don't make the mistake.

• 1:05:44Brian Preston?

  Is that tax deferred, that's your traditional, that's your 401Ks, that's your employer match. If you chose the Roth 401Ks or Roth 403Bs, typically, historically, that was your tax deferred. What those things do is they're great, is they grow tax deferred, just as the name implies. But when you pull the money out, it's all gonna be taxed at ordinary income, just like your wages are. So that's why, you got half of it right, is we like putting like your bonds and those type of assets that are conservative in these accounts, because when you pull out bonds, they pay income in ordinary income tax rate. So it doesn't feel like you're giving up anything when you let it grow tax deferred and then pull it out in, you know, an ordinary income tax rate way. So that's the best use for those type of assets.

• 1:06:29Brian Preston?

  Now, usually those accounts are so big, you're gonna end up having large cap, international and other things too, but you at least want to make sure you gave a nod towards getting those inefficient tax items into the tax deferred. Your tax free, that's your Roth. That's your favorite child, don't tell everybody else, but that is your favorite bucket, because not only does it grow tax free, but it is incredibly powerful from a legacy building, because you want, your kids are gonna want to inherit the Roth assets, because they got 10 years to let that money continue to grow even after they inherit it. And if they have, like I have a child that... Has some developmental struggles and things. Actually, our Roth assets are going to turn out to be great legacy building because they don't even have the 10-year rule if you have

• 1:07:13Brian Preston?

  some of these unique things. So they're also great from that standpoint as well. So we love tax-free because it is growing tax-free, has great legacy opportunities, it's going to be the last bucket you want to touch because it becomes your precious. So you want to be careful of that. Yeah. After-tax. Now, this one, after-tax is kind of like your Swiss Army knife is because it does have some tax efficiency, like dividends can be, you know, tax preferred. They give you a lower tax rate on qualified dividends. Capital gains, any assets you own for greater than 12 months, they're going to give you preferential tax treatment on lower rates with long-term capital gains. But this also could be your, not access to cash trap, but it could be money to where you, if you had a big investment that was great, like in

• 1:07:54Brian Preston?

  real estate or things. I love after-tax because you can get access to those accounts a lot easier than like the tax-deferred. And it also is a great bridge account if you retire early before social security and before Medicare and all those things kick in, or required mental distributions, you can use this. You have all the components, but you're like the, we found out that we had the best athlete on the field sitting in right field instead of at shortstop. And that's really what you've done. You have all the components and everything, but you put them out there. Whereas I'm typically the right fielder. I'm left-handed, you know, I'm not, I'm hoping the ball doesn't come to me. Meanwhile, Bo, who should be playing

• 1:08:35Brian Preston?

  shortstop, is hoping the ball's come to him. Put those assets to work the way they need to be maximized. And that's why, back to what the point I was going to say, you might still run into trouble even if you hire the advisor for that 401K is because you need somebody that's going to look at all three of these. And look, I get it. Nobody wants to spend money on a financial advisor. But there comes a point where your decisions get so big. That it's just, you've never done this before.

• 1:09:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:02Brian Preston?

  So why would you want to do something on a seven? Because this will turn into multiple seven figures. You're the CEO of a multiple seven figure, but yet you're going to let, you know, 1% blow up the whole thing. Just be careful of that. I'm not trying to, I think it is definitely a measure twice. I'm not telling everybody to go hire a financial advisor. We were very, but we do think that there does rise to a level. The complexities track you down and you're going to need somebody in your corner that can help you out with those type of things.

• 1:09:31Speaker 03

  So what we laid out in our financial order of operations is that if you were to accumulate in the way that we're saying to do that, when you get to age 60, that's what your three tax buckets will look like. You'll have 37% of your assets in tax deferred, 24% in tax free, and 39% in after tax. Well, if you can get to financial independence and have that kind of diversity in your tax buckets, you literally get to live that financially free life where you pick and choose. If you need access to money, it's there. If you want to do gifting, you have things you can gift. If you want to pick and choose what you pay in income tax, you can pull from the unique and distinct tax buckets. You guys are at the very beginning of your journey. You've already acknowledged that, but one of the great things about being at the beginning of the journey is the course that you set out on

• 1:10:16Speaker 03

  will have a big impact on where your ultimate destination is. A one to two degree change in course can have a significant change on where you land. That's why these small, seemingly small decisions like, "Oh, I'm just not going to do the mega backdoor this year. I'm going to pay off the student loans," can be impactful down the road. And what we want to see for you guys, you have the entire world at your feet. Like you are right here in a fantastic financial situation. We want to see you maximize. We want to see you optimize. We want to see you leaving opportunities behind like allocating your assets just slightly better, like taking advantage of accounts that you do have access to right now, because you guys are in a fantastic spot for a great, big, beautiful tomorrow.

• 1:10:59Speaker 03

  All right, what questions, what other questions do you guys have for us? What else can we speak to that might be valuable for y'all?

• 1:11:05Speaker 04

  I have a couple of questions.

• 1:11:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:11:07Speaker 04

  Obviously, like you've dived down into my insecurities, right? Like that is very obvious and I appreciate it. And I like taking a battering when it comes to stuff like this. So thank you. It was not a battering. No, you were very gentle, actually. You were like, "I feel bad about this." Like, "It wasn't that bad at all, really." I did get residencies with a little challenge. This was actually very gentle. But so I have a pension plan at my job that I guess that's one question that I have is like, how do I incorporate that thought process into life? You know what I mean? Like I am privileged where, I mean, I'm not vested yet. It is a substantial amount of money if I stayed for 20 years. I got, I don't, once again, insecurity, I don't feel comfortable banking on that.

• 1:11:50Speaker 04

  But like, if I could bank on it, if I had permission to bank on that at a point to actually spread more freely than like, if we wanted to go on crazy trips or like buy a house somewhere else or, you know what I mean? Like,

• 1:12:03Speaker 03

  Do you feel like at this, at this point of your financial life with the income that you guys have, saving 30%? Because that's what we've modeled here. If you were to save 30% and we go back to your portfolio path and see the track that you're on, even with a conservative 6% rate of return, by the time that you get to age 50, doing that, you'll be at $5 million.

• 1:12:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:22Speaker 03

  That would generate for you about $130,000 in today's dollars without ever eating into the principal. Well, when you take that and you add to it, the value of a pension, well, now you have an incredibly robust lifestyle. You have tons of options, tons of flexibility. Would the alternative be, hey, yes, you can count on your pension. So just back down your savings to saving 10%. Would you ever allow yourself to do that?

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  You would never do that.

• 1:12:45Speaker 03

  No. So, so it's a great question. Well, how do I factor in the pension?

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:50Speaker 03

  What we've, what we've already like kind of laid out for you is what we would argue is base case. And do you feel like at your income level, saving 30%, there are a lot of things that you're not doing, not taking advantage of, and the trips you aren't going. So like, we can answer the question for like, oh, well, how do I factor in the pension? But for you guys, it almost seems like that's not an incredibly pertinent question because you're already able to do all this. We're not telling you, you gotta save 50, 60% to catch up, to make up for lost. We're telling you, based on what you're doing, you're doing it. And based on the way that you guys say you spend money and live your lifestyle, you can still do all that other stuff. You, you already said it, saving the 30% is the mechanism that frees you.

• 1:13:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:13:31Speaker 03

  Let's go on the trip, let's buy the car, let's think about the second home. You're too young for second homes now. Don't think about that.

• 1:13:38Speaker 04

  I don't want it.

• 1:13:38Speaker 03

  You're too early, you're not at that stage yet. But at some point, you can think about that and can have that so long as you're moving along this trajectory. To go from 500,000 to 5 million over the course of 15 years is significant. You just have to make sure the lifestyle decisions you make don't pull you off of that line.

• 1:13:56Brian Preston?

  I like to think Chuck, I want to give you the construct so you can think about this in simple terms for the future too, is that by the way, if your employer was here, whoever structures your benefits and compensation, I'd want to shake their hand because they've obviously done a really good job of creating a great benefits plan, also adding this pension and other things. All these things are set up so that you pretty much can't leave if you wanted to because it's too good. I mean, it's really smart, but there's a risk here. They've protected themselves by creating this golden handcuff environment. There's still probably nothing that's in your contract that says if you screw something up or have any mistakes, they can still fire you. And I worry that you're too close to the beginning.

• 1:14:39Brian Preston?

  That's once again, back to just put them up there. There's three. There's make wealth, there's maintain wealth, and then there's multiply wealth. Where are you at? You're definitely in the make wealth phase. You're not in the maintain. Down the road, the aspirational goal is you get to multiply, meaning give it away and be very generous, but you're squarely in the make phase. So don't, even though these are generous benefits your employer's offered, there's a chance you get laid off next year, you get laid off three years from now, you don't, that stuff doesn't work for you. So you have to save and invest right now in this moment to kind of protect yourself. So, you know, and that stuff's going to be gravy in the future, that if you, you know, all this is going to line up and you're going to have this wealth that's going to, then you're going to get this pension. Then, by

• 1:15:23Brian Preston?

  the way, your pension even has a rollover option, so you can even have legacy opportunities. Because sometimes that's the problem with pensions, is that, you know, it's only based on your life or the joint life. You might even get the choice. Don't just assume you're going to take the rollover, or the lump sum, by the way, because there's always a math equation we like to do for clients to, because sometimes these pensions are so, you know, just frothy that I'm like, no, keep the pension, because the cash flow promises are really strong. But you just, I think it's too soon to count on that. So you need to be a little more scared that I've got to build these assets. And it's back to, don't, don't be paying down debt. Don't just be assuming the golden handcuffs so we can go live this crazy life. When you, you're just too close to the, to the starting line to have your

• 1:16:07Brian Preston?

  assets working for you. Your army of dollars hasn't built up enough just yet.

• 1:16:11Speaker 04

  No, well said. I mean, that's, yeah, that's how I feel too. But I've just, because I'm not even banking on the pension. Like, future planning, like, I use YNAB as like a budgeting app.

• 1:16:20Brian Preston?

  It's great.

• 1:16:21Speaker 04

  You know, different parts in YNAB for investing in the future.

• 1:16:24Speaker 03

  Do you both participate in YNAB or is this exclusively a thing you do?

• 1:16:28Speaker 06

  It's mostly him. He shared it with me and I looked at it for like a week. I was like, and then I actually legitimately forgot about it.

• 1:16:36Speaker 03

  Do you find, I didn't mean to interrupt your question, but I'm going to ask because I think it's pertinent. Do you find that using YNAB is valuable in helping you change your behavior? Meaning, you already know that you're saving 30%, you already know where the money's going, you're doing it, but you still use YNAB to track, okay, we went to the grocery store, so there's groceries, we went to go out to eat. Does that change, by you doing the exercise, is it changing the way you behave?

• 1:16:58Speaker 06

  I also will say, sorry, not to, not to cut in, but I will say, I don't use it independently, but like I said, like we sit on the couch and he's doing finances on YNAB. So he's asking me like, oh, what was this, what was this, what was this? So that he can put it in all of our categories. I'm like, I don't know. Um, no, but it's good. It's a good check for me. Cause then it does help me, you know, track what we're spending. And then like, we have different buckets, like to save for vacation and to save for like, we like to do like quarterly gifts to friends and like to save for different things. And we can see if we're not like meeting those goals. So then we can, we have rearranged like spending.

• 1:17:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's what I honestly, I feel like anymore. I, I think it's nice for me. It's like to really follow the cash flows. Cause I like for the buckets that I want allocated towards, right? We're meeting that goal. And like, you know, if I have excess income for the month, I know exactly how much I have and I can divvy it up. So I find, I find it really helpful.

• 1:18:00Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:18:00Speaker 04

  But I find it now, now that we're making good money, I find it a pain in the butt to like go through every single little.

• 1:18:05Speaker 03

  Very cumbersome.

• 1:18:06Speaker 04

  Yeah. Which, but to me it provides still a good value, but I just don't feel like I'm using it efficiently.

• 1:18:12Brian Preston?

  Let me, let me try to give you once again, a mindset structure to kind of process this. I love budgeting when you're starting out because I think the discipline component is so lacking for the majority of Americans that we need to kind of get the reps in to figure out how to be good with money. But there is a point, and this is back to make, maintain, or multiply. When you're in the make phase, I do like people budgeting and using apps like you need a budget and so forth. But there comes a point, and this echoes something you shared with us, Margo, is that I have seen very successful couples to where especially the financially minded one takes this a little too long, too far, to where they're asking for receipts. They're asking, hey, what did you spend this money on and so forth?

• 1:18:57Speaker 06

  He's never asked me for a receipt.

• 1:18:59Brian Preston?

  But I'm just, I'm going ahead, I'm the, the guy being married 27 years is just reaching into the future to tell you what risks are out there.

• 1:19:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:19:08Brian Preston?

  Is that there will come a point that what, while you're in the build or making wealth phase, this is empowering, this is good communication. But after you're getting closer to the maintaining and you're still asking, what was that money you were spending on? It's going to start feeling more controlling or once again, putting power back to the money. You have to be careful that in a, in a, in a marriage. And I would just have a transition point to where, and that's why Bo and I talk on the show all the time. I love budgeting as you're starting out, but we eventually transition into cash, what we call cash management plans for scarcity. And I talk a lot about this in Millionaire Mission too, and the fact that I think what will happen is, once you put enough of your assets on

• 1:19:50Brian Preston?

  autopilot, meaning that your retirement savings are going in monthly, your after-tax accounts being funded. That's why we love talking about this saving and investing 25%. Once you know those boxes are being checked, it should give you the freedom to just know, who cares what happens with the rest of this? Because this thing's on autopilot. And you have the muscle memory, because you did all the hard work with the budgeting at the beginning, you don't have to keep the control and all these things that create the, the drama and the relationship if, if it's not necessary.

• 1:20:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. I think we're getting there and like, Margo's income's like increasing a little bit. We really have like more flush cash now too. Where like initially was just really when we started off.

• 1:20:32Brian Preston?

  You had to make sure there was enough.

• 1:20:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was just, do we have enough to do X, Y, and Z?

• 1:20:35Brian Preston?

  And I'm not saying cut it off right now. Cause like I said, y'all are squarely the beginning of this thing and in the make phase. So, you know, Margot has to put up with a little bit longer on it. But, but, but be honest with him in the communication. If it gets to the point where you feel like it's control.

• 1:20:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:20:48Brian Preston?

  Y'all have those discussions because that's when you probably need to graduate from, you know, doing, you know, doing a full, a full budget to more of a cash management, especially if y'all do your, your checkup as a couple and you look at your financial life.

• 1:21:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:21:01Brian Preston?

  And you go, holy cow, would you see those guys? They use 6%, which is a super conservative. And, and, cause I think this is going to be much bigger than even what you've shown, what, what we've shown you. So this, this is probably going to be even rosier for you guys down the road.

• 1:21:15Speaker 06

  So I have a question.

• 1:21:16Speaker 04

  Yes, ma'am.

• 1:21:16Speaker 06

  Um, so mine is more about like the mentality and psychological part, because that I think is a big, that's just something that, you know, I think is really important and that I worry about on his behalf. Do you guys have like recommendations? Like you said, and thanks for walking us through all of this. Like, you know, we're in the early stages, but it, for the most part, right? Like there are changes we can make, but for the most part, like we're on a pretty good track.

• 1:21:51Brian Preston?

  We're doing great.

• 1:21:52Speaker 04

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 1:21:52Speaker 06

  Well, do you guys have any recommendations like on the anxiety component of it for him? Like in the stage right now, but then also moving through those other buckets of, what was it? Maintain and multiply?

• 1:22:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:22:08Speaker 06

  You know, psychologically, the scarcity, not enough. Like he probably would be so happy if we came in here and you guys were like, okay, you have to save 90% of your, of your income and only spend, you know, $10 a month. He'd be like, see, I told you. Psychologically, I think that would be easier for him to hear than to hear.

• 1:22:31Speaker 04

  Then you're doing okay.

• 1:22:31Speaker 06

  You're doing okay. And, and how do you find that balance between, right? Like we are at the very beginning of this. None of us are fortune tellers, so we don't know what the future is going to hold. But like, how do we walk that tightrope of like? Enjoying life now and setting ourselves, meaning like not being so stressed out about finances, while setting ourselves up for, you know, a good future.

• 1:23:02Speaker 03

  Yes, I've got two, two quick psychology things that I think would be incredibly valuable. Uh, one is review a net worth statement every single year together. Do your net worth, everything that you own minus everything that you owe and go through it together. And in that exercise, I want you to do two things. I want you to write your goals down in the same way that we wrote it down. Hey, here are our long-term goals. We want work-life balance. We want to be financially independent. We want to be able to help our son out. We want to be able to be charitable and give to others. And keep that at the top of your net worth statement. But then every year, when you review it, do your annual goals. Hey, what are the things that we want to accomplish this year with our finances? Hey, we want to make sure that we give away this much money. We want to make sure that we go on this many trips. We want to make sure that we have this experience. So every year when you do this, not only are you keeping track of the long-term goals you're working towards,

• 1:23:45Speaker 03

  you're also making sure that you're defining and clearly articulating what your short-term goals are. Hey, we want to create a memory with our son doing this. We want to change someone's life in this way by doing this. If you can do that every year, what you're going to notice is two things. One, you're going to see as you progress each year, how you're moving closer and closer to those long-term goals. Well, then if you also track the short-term goals every year, you're going to see how many of those goals you actually did accomplish through time. So you're going to begin removing the anxiety around, oh, man, we're not, we're not living, we're not doing things today. No, look at all the stuff we accomplished last year. Oh, look over the last five years, all the things we're able to do. And yet, here we still are, moving towards the ultimate goal that we want to have for our great, big, beautiful tomorrow and our great, big, beautiful today.

• 1:24:30Speaker 03

  So that's the first thing I would say. The second recommendation I would get, I would give you is since you are on the very front end, right now, today, go ahead and envision. Your dream life. What does the house look like? What does the timeline look like? What do all those things look like? And define what that is and write that down. We want to be able to do this and do this and do this and do this. And then you work towards that goal. And you have an income that's going to allow you to work towards that goal. But as you begin to see the numbers grow from half a million to one million to two million to three million, you're going to notice it's going to be really easy to push those goals out. If you can really remember what that dream life was today, 10 years from now, when you hit it, you're not going to feel the anxiety around, "Oh, I'm not doing enough," or "I need more." "Five million was a great goal, but now I need seven and a half million."

• 1:25:13Speaker 03

  And then, well, seven and a half is good, but I need 10. It will allow you to constantly keep yourself grounded. Hey, remember, this is the dream life we said we wanted to live. Hey, we are there. We're now living that. We don't need more. We don't need to do more. Everything else above and beyond this is just gravy. If you can do those things to keep yourself grounded, as you move towards it, the anxiety will naturally get smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller.

• 1:25:36Brian Preston?

  Marco, because I love, because you're a professional in this. No, but you'll understand, you'll understand where I'm coming from with this is because I think if we unpack this, first take the dynamic of saving versus spending. Majority of Americans have no problem with consumption. And I would, I would even be willing to say where it seems like we're addicted to consumption or spending. And then you have somebody like Chuck come along, who his life, he's actually been rewarded by becoming addicted to saving. If you think about early in his career or starting out, he gets out of high school, he goes to college. He's got to be as lean as possible because that mean, the leaner he is, the less his student loans will be.

• 1:26:18Brian Preston?

  And then, you know, even when he goes to residency, the leaner he lives his life, the more reward it seems like it's paying. So he gets addicted to saving. And there's no support groups to people who are addicted to saving. It's because you become empower builders, you become extremely successful. But this is where we as financial advisors, Deal with this constantly because we have an entire client load of people who are addicted to saving because there's all these feedback loops that this has probably been the thing that has created lots of positives in your life and so, but it becomes potentially an unhealthy thing. That's why I say there's a big difference between being a financial mutant, which is an optimizer, versus a financial miser, which lets the money become

• 1:27:03Brian Preston?

  the idol and the things that give you trouble with it. Now, y'all aren't in the bad phase yet because I want to tell you what I would do to address this going forward. And this is what a good financial advisor will do. It's because a lot of people think, like, you remember if you watch financial content in the 90s, a lot of the public content that you saw on TVs, on the cable channels, was this advisor and she would just yell, "No" at everything. "If you want to go to Hawaii, no, you can't go to Hawaii." You know, "Do I get a new car?" "No." So, everybody thinks that financial advisors tell everybody, "No." Our big job is to kind of unpack people's savings behaviors and their inability to consume and help them still live their best life. So, here's the things I use to kind of break this. Okay.

• 1:27:47Brian Preston?

  Is I run the numbers. You know, Bo talked about doing the net worth, but also, you know, before you hire a financial advisor, we have the reason we even crafted the course, if you go to learn.moneyguy.com, is the Know Your Number course, is so people would have some type of tool to put in all their assets, put in their growth objectives and assumptions, the inflation assumptions, and then see how big the number is going to be. And so, that way you can look at it and be like, "Oh, my gosh, what am I doing? What am I worried about?" If we just keep doing this, because by the way, even though I picked on you about this debt, the reality is, is if you didn't come see us, your income is big enough and your discipline is big enough, you're going to be successful just off the

• 1:28:28Brian Preston?

  raw, you know, discipline and determination of what you've done. It's just, we're trying to help you optimize it. Yeah, yeah. But it's also, that's just one component, but it's also making sure that this component of anxiety or inability to enjoy spending causes detrimental problems in the future.

• 1:28:47Brian Preston?

  So if you run the numbers, it's going to give you permission to enjoy. And I've already used one of these components and another thing I said, I want you to pretend to be your future self. And Bo kind of talked about this too. And he said, what is the goal of where you're going? What's how big is the house? You know, what do the vacations look like? Go ahead and chart that path now so that you can in a, in a healthy way, think about who you want to be. And start challenging yourself to get outside your comfort zone and actually start living that life now. So that you don't have regret. Everything is about not having regrets because I want you to be. I think there's this, y'all, y'all aren't there yet because you're still in your thirties. When I got in my forties, I became so sentimental and now I'm in my fifties and I'm like, oh my gosh, it's even worse.

• 1:29:30Brian Preston?

  Because now my kid, my, my oldest daughter's in college and the life is cruel because your kids go to college. And you become so sentimental and yet they're becoming more independent. And I just, so you're going to have lots of time to reflect on this stuff. And I just want to make sure that you don't have regrets because of, and I don't get the feeling. It sounds like your brilliant employer has structured a job where you get quality life balance. You're not, you're not giving all of your life to your career. You're, you're being able to be a good father, good husband. But I just want to make sure that you're doing that on the, the financial side as well. So you don't wake up one day and go, you know what? We should have done more things while our son was at home. We should have done more things to make memories as a couple.

• 1:30:11Brian Preston?

  That, that's so jump into your future self to make sure you, you don't have regrets.

• 1:30:17Speaker 04

  Okay. No, I like that because I mean, that's why I like, and I worry about that too. It's like, am I, I think I asked you last night before we went to bed. I said, is there something we can change? Like, should we say maybe a little less, like a percent less? And like, go do more things like, would that be, would that make us happier? It's just like, no, we're doing everything we want. Right.

• 1:30:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:30:33Speaker 04

  Which I think is true.

• 1:30:35Speaker 06

  No, I mean, we're extremely lucky that if we haven't said that already, we are extremely lucky.

• 1:30:40Speaker 04

  Extremely fortunate. Like, I, yeah, I don't know what to say.

• 1:30:43Speaker 06

  I think like, even though like drilling down a little bit more on that point though, is like, we're doing all the things we want to do, but even like it within those events, right? Or experiences that we're building, right? Like, obviously if you go on a trip, it's amazing. You can go on the trip and like. Then if it's like, oh, well, let's stay at a place that's a hundred dollars more a night because it's more comfortable. We'll have a separate spot for the baby, whatever. Or, well, overall, it's, we'd save five hundred dollars if we stay at this, in this closet. Like, be like, well, we don't, we're, we're, we're fine in a closet.

• 1:31:26Speaker 06

  Which like, we are fine in a closet and like, that would be fine. But I think like, I don't know. I, I would love if you can start thinking about some of, like, on that level. Not that like, we need to be doing more experiences or things like that, but optimizing what we, optimizing what we are doing already, you know?

• 1:31:48Speaker 03

  And then it's being on the same page. It's like, hey, why don't, instead of this year, instead of us doing these three trips, let's do two trips, let's do them maybe nicer than we've done them in the past. Let's stay in the nicer place, or let's fly the better ticket, or whatever, whatever that thing is for you guys, that's going to be a marital communication thing that y'all have, because you may need to feel comfortable saying, hey, we're going to spend the same amount of money overall, but we're going to spend it on less things and we're going to do it nicer. I think that's okay. You guys are going to have to define where that middle ground exists and how it satisfies both of you.

• 1:32:17Speaker 06

  Totally.

• 1:32:17Speaker 03

  It's fun things to figure out as a marriage.

• 1:32:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, I feel like we're both pretty flexible, so we can meet in the middle, which is, which is good.

• 1:32:24Brian Preston?

  I know we're coming to a close. I, I will say one final thing, and then I'll close this out, is that something that I've loved about life is, have you heard about the hedonic treadmill? It's where, you know, if you spread out, you, you're supposed to do bad things as fast as possible because you adjust to your happiness level, but good things, you should spread out. So I love, maybe every year you go on a vacation, kick it up a little bit more, so you don't get too established on how bougie you are too early, but it's just every time, you know, it gives you a little bit more enjoyment and you get to, it gets to be renewed and refreshed for each of you.

• 1:32:59Speaker 06

  So this year, we take the airline where they charge you to breathe, but next year, we take the one.

• 1:33:04Speaker 03

  We get first check back for free.

• 1:33:08Speaker 03

  I love it. All right. Are you guys, are you ready for your homework? I got some homework items. You ready? These are all fun ones. First order of homework, I would increase my emergency fund. Based on where you guys are, I think having six months of liquid cash, six months of living expenses and liquid cash makes a lot of sense. I'd revisit my asset location. I think if you looked at the types of investments you hold and the types of accounts, you are not optimal right now. I think you can move some stuff around. You can keep the same allocation, but just locate them differently and you're likely be in a better position. I think that you ought to rework your current savings strategy. Rather than prioritize paying off all that debt this year as fast as possible, we might recommend taking advantage of other opportunities like backdoor raw. So that way you actually get your money working for you

• 1:33:51Speaker 03

  at some interest rate greater than 0%. And then these are the last two. Number one, get together and define your today goals. What are our goals for this year that we want to accomplish? Whether that be travel, experiences, giving, whatever that is. And then define, okay, what are our long-term goals? How can we accomplish both without one making us sacrifice the other? And then rinse and repeat that every single year. And you will begin to move towards your great, big, beautiful tomorrow.

• 1:34:18Brian Preston?

  Great.

• 1:34:18Speaker 06

  Love it. We love homework.

• 1:34:22Brian Preston?

  Chuck, Margot, y'all have been awesome. This has been a blast. We've really enjoyed, you came on, shared all this information. I will tell you, I really enjoy embracing just the journey y'all are in. And I can't wait to hear the updates as y'all reach more and more success. I know all of you out there in the audience, hopefully you guys also have learned from what Chuck and Margot have shared today. Beau, if people wanted to join and become part of Making a Millionaire, what do they need to do?

• 1:34:49Speaker 03

  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 talk about any of the, if you'd like to see any of the resources that we talked about today, you can go to moneyguy.com/resources.

• 1:35:00Brian Preston?

  Well, guys, this has been a blast. I'm your host, Brian Preston, joined by Mr. Beau Hanson, Money Guy team.

• 1:35:07Speaker 03

  Making a Millionaire is hosted by Brian Preston and Beau Hanson. Brian and Beau 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.

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