The Truth About Starting Over in Your 40s | Making a Millionaire

Shelby and Dustin have been married for just a year, but they’re already tackling some of life’s biggest financial challenges together. From paying off $57K in student loans to planning for retirement and college, they’re learning to align priorities, merge money habits, and make their savings work harder. This episode is packed with practical strategies and surprising realizations that could change your own financial game plan. ⁠⁠⁠⁠Jump start your journey with our FREE financial resources⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Reach your goals faster with our products⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Take the relationship to the next level: become a client⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe on YouTube for early access and go beyond the podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Connect with us on social media for more content⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Bring confidence to your wealth building with simplified strategies from The Money Guy. Learn how to apply financial tactics that go beyond common sense and help you reach your money goals faster. Make your assets do the heavy lifting so you can quit worrying and start living a more fulfilled life. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠NordVPN.com/MONEYGUY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Into the wild. The Cartier Panther encounters a shimmering crocodile, a lonely lovebird, a breathless zebra, and a restless tiger.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games. Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 0:20Speaker 02

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.

• 0:22Speaker 01

  Filmed for IMAX.

• 0:24Speaker 02

  Make them remember you.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, November 20th, 2013.

• 0:30Brian Preston?

  I am curious though for you, Dusty, this thing's been part of the family since. I mean, because you've had student loans since you were in your twenties, eighteen to twenties. So now extinguishing this at forty-three, how's that feel to know that this will be completely behind you?

• 0:42Speaker 04

  Again, things I've been resigned to. It feels like an albatross, but it's been around my neck that I just got used to the weight, you know? Where people have a disability, they just feel like, oh, my pain level is X, so that feels normal. And it's almost like I feel a sense of guilt about it. I brought this into our world and it is what it is and I can't undo choices that I made. I'm glad to get this out of my life because I got way better things I can do with fifty-seven thousand dollars.

• 1:09Speaker 05

  I am Shelby. I am thirty-three. We were just talking earlier, so I've been in Nashville, in the Nashville area for ten years. Next week will be ten years.

• 1:19Speaker 06

  That makes you a native around these parts, right?

• 1:20Speaker 05

  Yeah. Once you hit that ten-year mark.

• 1:23Speaker 06

  That's right. That's exactly right.

• 1:25Speaker 05

  So I'm from Texas originally, born and raised outside of Houston, and I moved here for work.

• 1:29Speaker 04

  I moved here with the boy in two thousand eight, or to Nashville, actually. Moved down into Murfreesboro in 2013, so I've been here for quite a while too.

• 1:38Speaker 06

  Also a native now.

• 1:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:40Speaker 05

  Even more so than me.

• 1:41Brian Preston?

  You're very liberal with this native thing.

• 1:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, I also grew up in Texas, but I don't claim it as my home, so, yeah.

• 1:47Speaker 05

  Oh, I still claim I'm a Texan.

• 1:49Speaker 06

  That makes you unique amongst Texans, because every Texan, even Texans that live away for like fifty years still call themselves Texans.

• 1:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's its own country.

• 1:55Brian Preston?

  It's a very low count on when it hits. But I always ask people from Texas, do you have a Texas tattoo?

• 2:02Speaker 05

  No.

• 2:03Speaker 06

  No, look at that.

• 2:04Speaker 05

  She's just got a lot of them. No, but you have to understand that Texas, like, raises you to be very proud. Like you, you are born and raised there. Like whenever you're in elementary school, middle school, high school, like you say the pledge allegiance to the United States and then you say the pledge to Texas.

• 2:18Speaker 06

  That's right, of course.

• 2:18Speaker 05

  And like, I think a lot of people don't even realize that. Like you're raised to be very proud to be from Texas.

• 2:23Speaker 06

  And it sticks. All of our, all of our folks.

• 2:25Brian Preston?

  She doesn't think my question's weird.

• 2:26Speaker 05

  No, I mean, it's totally a fair question.

• 2:29Speaker 04

  My football coach was my history teacher and we did Texas history.

• 2:32Speaker 06

  That's it.

• 2:32Speaker 04

  I don't remember anything about it.

• 2:33Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, apparently other states don't do like their state history. It's a whole year. It's just Texas history.

• 2:38Brian Preston?

  Georgia is seventh grade, by the way.

• 2:40Speaker 05

  There you go.

• 2:40Speaker 06

  That's when we do Georgia history.

• 2:41Brian Preston?

  Well, that's why I know. I could still tell you like all the counties in Georgia and stuff, but Tennessee, I'm a little clueless.

• 2:46Speaker 06

  A little shaky on that.

• 2:47Speaker 04

  You know Williamson, that's fine.

• 2:48Speaker 06

  All right, awesome. So you guys moved here a number of years ago. How long have you guys, how long have you guys known each other? How long have y'all been married?

• 2:54Speaker 04

  Known each other about a year and a half. We got married almost a year ago.

• 2:57Speaker 05

  We're coming up on our one year anniversary.

• 2:59Speaker 06

  Happy anniversary.

• 3:00Speaker 05

  Thank you, which was basically a year from our first date.

• 3:03Speaker 06

  Oh wow.

• 3:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, we've had both of us, I'm 33, he's 43. We had kind of lived our life. We had both been married. He has Mason, his son, and we just knew what we were looking for. And once we found it, we said, all right, this is a good thing. We know when we see a good thing and.

• 3:19Speaker 06

  I love it. So one year anniversary. Now we're talking about, okay, hey, what's the rest of our lives look like? Like how are we going to put this together? How are we going to think about doing this collectively as a team?

• 3:27Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 3:27Speaker 06

  That's awesome. And it's great. You guys were kind enough to share with us a net worth statement. So I just want to give the audience sort of a rundown of sort of where you guys are right now, because it's pretty awesome. As we sit here right now, you guys have a total net worth of $400,000, which is pretty wild. And then you have a great income collectively as a household. You make about $180,000. So you guys are in a great spot and doing great. Has it always been that way? Like we're both of you like, walk us, give us the, so we know where you are today. Give us a backstory.

• 3:57Speaker 04

  Okay. The difference between her and I, she's always been a very diligent, responsible human being. And I, and not so much with myself. I, I really didn't make, making money a priority until I got into real estate. I started that about six years ago.

• 4:12Speaker 06

  Awesome.

• 4:13Speaker 04

  2019. Prior to that, I was a school teacher. You know, I didn't make much money doing that. And prior to that, I was a journalist. I made even less money. So, yeah. And so at this point in my life, like I've been behind the eight ball as far as saving up for things and, you know, planning ahead. Whereas she has a 401k that puts mine to shame, you know? Or she has one. She has a 401k. I do not. Yeah. So yeah, we come from different paths on that and mine is just started a little bit later. Once my boy grew up, I was able to basically invest more in a career, you know.

• 4:47Speaker 06

  But let's pause for a second. Forty-three is not old.

• 4:50Speaker 04

  No, no, no.

• 4:51Speaker 06

  You know, there's.

• 4:51Brian Preston?

  I'm older than that.

• 4:53Speaker 06

  I know some really old guys, right? So forty-three, like, okay, yeah, maybe things didn't go exactly the way you would have written it, but here you are in a great spot with a lot of opportunity moving forward, right?

• 5:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, we're doing fine.

• 5:04Brian Preston?

  And then Shelby and Mason probably make you even feel younger.

• 5:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:08Brian Preston?

  Pulling you down on that side as well.

• 5:10Speaker 04

  I keep the beard up. It keeps me young, you know.

• 5:12Speaker 06

  What about you? What was your background, Will Fined? Did you grow up knowing about money and thinking about money? How, how did that go?

• 5:18Speaker 05

  Okay, so my mom wants me to tell you all thank you. I turned her on to the show. And so she said, make sure to say thank you from me. And my mom, which is hilarious for me to, to think that she wants me to thank you because I think of her as being extremely financially responsible and always have been. So my money knowledge comes from her. My parents were married up until I was about fifteen. And whenever I was younger, we had a piggy bank and it had three different sections. So it had spend and give, savings.

• 5:50Brian Preston?

  This sounds familiar.

• 5:51Speaker 05

  And investment.

• 5:51Speaker 06

  I love it.

• 5:53Speaker 05

  And every week we would get whatever we were, whatever our age was, we'd get that in dollars and we had to divide it into three. So even, you know, nine years old, you get nine dollars, but really you only get like three dollars, right? Because the rest of it has to go away. And that's as long as I remember, probably until my parents got divorced, like until I was fifteen or sixteen, like that was money, right? And I remember one of the first, the first few things that I saved for, like in first grade, I saved for this watch. I really wanted this watch that was like a fortune teller watch, like you would, like a Magic Eight Ball. You'd ask a question, right? Exactly. But I had to save my money to get that watch. I had to save to get roller blades and a boombox that had like a CD player and a tape player all in one. So that, for me, growing up, like that was my kind of upbringing with money.

• 6:37Speaker 05

  Both of my parents made way more money than I even realized. Like, I thought we were just like middle class, whatever. But my parents both made a significant amount of money. We did not need for anything. We really didn't want for much either. But my mom was still trying to teach us, like, you don't just get whatever you want. Like if we, once we got allowance, if you wanted to go to a friend's birthday party, like you had to take your allowance to buy that friend their birthday gift. Um, another one that I love is I was eighth grade. We had a trip to Washington DC. And my parents said, if you want to go, you have to pay for it.

• 7:09Brian Preston?

  Oh, wow.

• 7:09Speaker 05

  I don't know, $1,500, $1,200, whatever it was. And I thought that I was paying for this out of my like investment money. And so I went on this trip thinking that I paid for it and my mom loves to tell this story. I came home and I was like, Mom, they were just, they, they just didn't care. They weren't really paying attention. They weren't listening when we got the museums and everything else. Like I paid for this trip.

• 7:33Speaker 05

  And then come to find out, I didn't actually pay for it. My parents did. Like they didn't take money out of my account for it, but I thought I paid for it. So I was like, no, I got skin in the game.

• 7:42Brian Preston?

  Yeah.

• 7:42Speaker 05

  And so that I think is a little bit of a difference from how we, each of us were raised. And that's kind of some of what I want to pass on to Mason is I remember how important that was to me. Like I had to pay for half of my first car. I had to pay for this trip to Washington DC. So I have always felt like this sense of like money matters and it's important and I need to use it wisely.

• 8:03Brian Preston?

  Kudos to your parents for doing the stealth wealth thing where you never even knew how well they were doing. And they were kind of instilling things.

• 8:09Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 8:10Brian Preston?

  It's, it's interesting. We even have financial advisors on the team here who grew up listening to the show on road trips like when they were in the seventh and eighth grade. So it, it does work, you know, modeling good behavior in front of your kids is, it can be tremendous. Pay tremendous dividends down the road too. And you're, you're proof of that.

• 8:29Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 8:29Speaker 06

  Be cashing in on those dividends.

• 8:33Speaker 06

  As you guys have, you said, we've each, we each kind of lived our lives and then now we've come together. How are you talking about money now as a couple? Like, how are you guys thinking about like money and finances? And how does that work in the household now, one year in?

• 8:45Speaker 04

  There's a lot to that answer. The, I think the big one is I helped her sell her house last year so that we could buy one together. So she was wise and bought before all the real estate inflation came down around 2019, 2020 here. So her real estate value doubled and basically we were able to really get a strong cash injection right off the bat.

• 9:10Speaker 06

  Great.

• 9:10Speaker 04

  So that did us quite a lot of good starting off.

• 9:17Speaker 04

  And of course you had everything you brought into it as well, but so I don't know, I kind of feel like

• 9:22Brian Preston?

  Any drama bringing everything together? Cause I mean, you have a son and then also did you consolidating finances? Anything that was, cause I know my marriage first year was kind of the most difficult because you're, it's a changing period.

• 9:36Speaker 05

  Yeah. So I, I, there hasn't been drama necessarily, but obviously you have some pain points, right? So, um, and Dustin didn't come with nothing. Like he had, he was planning on purchasing a house. So he had, you know,

• 9:48Speaker 04

  Taking the steps.

• 9:49Brian Preston?

  We get that. I understand.

• 9:51Speaker 05

  So we did combine finances. Basically, once I sold my house, basically what you see in savings is that plus our 20% down on our house was what I made from the sale of my house. So that's really what has set us up to that point, which I'm super grateful for. But we did combine finances pretty much shortly after I sold my house, right? We closed on our new house, a week or two before we got married. So pretty much at that point, we combined all of our finances. Um, currently everything is combined. We have our own personal checking accounts that has like fun money. So like $300 a month, like just go spend it and you don't have to answer questions and whatever. You just spend it on whatever you want. Um, but for the most part, everything's combined.

• 10:31Speaker 05

  Now, when we talk about pain points, doing that, number one, um, part of what we're going to talk about is I want to be able to help Mason go to college. Like I want to be able to help pay for that. I, my parents saved up money for my brother, sister and I to go to college. And I would like to be able to offer that to Mason. We're on the flip side, spoiler alert, student loans there. That's Dustin's. Where he didn't have his parents save, you know, money for him to, to go to college. So he had to take out a series of student loans. So we can obviously see a big difference there, but I also am getting a 12 year, I'm, I'm on my back foot trying to save for Mason's college. Right? Because I'm coming in when he's 11 or 12 and he's going to be going to college a lot sooner than if I would have given birth to him and started this 12 years ago.

• 11:15Speaker 05

  And Dustin was doing the best as he could and he was doing great as a single dad, but didn't have a lot of extra income to be setting aside a bunch of money for retirement or college or anything like that. So I feel like we're starting a little bit behind there. So that is a, a little bit of a stress to me. And then, uh, the student loans, obviously there was conversation. I kind of was having thoughts of like, okay, do I just take some of this money? When I sold the house and like, just pay the student loans off. I said, no, I'm not going to do that. Let's like hold on to it. It was in deferment. At the time and

• 11:47Speaker 06

  Things changed.

• 11:47Brian Preston?

  Yeah.

• 11:50Brian Preston?

  We're very aware now.

• 11:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, so that's that. We'll talk about that in a moment. And then the only other thing was the retirement of like, okay, I want us to be retired. I want us to be able to retire together. Dustin's 10 years older than I am, obviously, seeing that he's at a different point in retirement and maybe where I don't, I'm not sure that he's quite where he needs to be. I'm kind of scared like, are you even going to be able to catch up? Like, are you going to be able to retire with me? Am I, I don't want to be retired and then have him still working.

• 12:14Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 12:14Speaker 05

  But I also, in an ideal situation, I would retire a little bit early. He would maybe retire a little bit later than he normally would. And we could retire within a couple of years of each other and really enjoy that time together.

• 12:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 12:26Speaker 05

  So that's kind of my other concern of like, okay, what are we doing with the finance or the retirement, all of that, like, are we where we need to be? Those were the pain points, if you will, as we were combining finances of just figuring out, okay, what are we doing from here moving forward?

• 12:38Speaker 06

  Love that.

• 12:39Speaker 04

  And prior to meeting her, where, I mean, I was just gonna get a townhome with my boy and raise him and then do whatever I wanted afterwards. Wasn't really planning on getting married. But now that things have drastically changed, I had basically resigned that I probably wasn't really gonna have a retirement until I was able to snowball enough to be able to get there. And I was, again, behind the eight ball. So I came into that relationship with that mindset, really. And now I'm having to get used to a very different world in which I can, you know, have some wealth and get ahead a little bit. And we act, we were at a very good starting position for that.

• 13:15Brian Preston?

  But you're not alone in that mindset. I think that's the, when we do shows on net worth by age and so forth, the majority of Americans kind of, one day they wake up and go, I guess I need to be thinking about retirement. Usually it's like 15 years from retirement. And you're like, you know, this is much easier. You choose your heart. It's easier, you start and you still have, I guess, we've already shared with you, 43.

• 13:39Speaker 06

  It ain't ours.

• 13:40Brian Preston?

  You still have a lot of compound and army of dollar bills and the wealth multiplier can do a lot of good for you. Two things I've kind of noticed, I always love dynamics with the couples. Shell, you strike me as that you're driving this, this train in a lot of ways. Is that a fair statement?

• 13:55Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 13:55Brian Preston?

  Tell me how that dynamic works. And do you feel like you're carrying a lot of weight? Or is it, is it so? Because you were saying you're worried he's not going to be able to catch up. So give us some, some insight into how you're feeling about all that.

• 14:07Speaker 05

  A couple of things. So when in our finances together, I'm the one that manages the budget. And we use Rocket Money. So like, I'm the one that goes in and organizes everything. I ask him, you know, hey, I would like for you to kind of know what's happening with the budget. But he is not as engaged with it on a daily basis. Like I'm in there every morning and every afternoon and every night, like multiple times a day. Oh, I know this charge came through. Did it show up in Rocket Money yet? Refresh, refresh. Like, I want to make sure that everything's there. I'm obsessive about it really. Which doesn't stress me out or anything. That's just, I like to know where everything is. Where if Dustin were to even look at it, I would think on a daily basis, it would be too, it would be overwhelming.

• 14:46Speaker 04

  Especially first thing in the morning. That'd be a fast track of depression right there.

• 14:51Speaker 05

  He does look at it, like at least monthly to make sure, okay, like, these are the things that are, you know, tax exempt for work or whatever. He'll, he'll kind of track everything that way. So I definitely am managing the day to day budget. But it's pretty easy because Dustin doesn't really fight me on it. He's, I'm more of a spender than he is. And I'm still not a super extravagant spender. So it's not like he's swiping cards, swiping cards. I'm like, please stop, stop, stop. We don't have the money for that. He's not really super engaged in the day to day, but he's also not causing problems. So it's like, you know what? If that's what, if that's what, what keeps you relaxed, then all good. You know, it's

• 15:25Speaker 06

  So it's like you'll have a good balance there. You kind of know what you like.

• 15:29Speaker 04

  She keeps making good calls.

• 15:30Brian Preston?

  Well, I think as a husband, as long as she's happy, you're happy. I mean, in a lot of ways, I mean, that's, that's a lot of dynamic in, in relationships.

• 15:38Speaker 04

  She's driving the train. She's not, she's not killing us by a long shot.

• 15:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:41Speaker 04

  So we're doing fine.

• 15:43Brian Preston?

  The, the second part was I'm looking at y'all's debt and I was, I mean, we'll talk about the mortgage looks reasonable. Student loans, we'll talk about that in a second. I didn't recognize what Fortiva was.

• 15:55Speaker 05

  Yeah. So when we bought the house, we got a security system installed. As a woman that lived alone for 10 plus years, like your house has to have a security system. So we got that installed and with the Cameras and the door locks and the sensors, all of that. They're like, hey, you can do the zero interest, like $4,000 for all the equipment. So you don't have to pay the equipment upfront.

• 16:14Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 16:14Speaker 05

  I actually forgot that we even had that because it's zero interest. It's one of those things like 70 bucks a month, whatever we pay. If we wanted to pay that off tomorrow, we could. Not a problem, but it's 0% interest. So I've gone back and forth like, eh, I can have that money working. It's on automatic payment. So I'm not worried that I'm going to like miss a payment and you know, wreck my credit, anything like that. That's what that is.

• 16:34Speaker 06

  0% until it's paid off?

• 16:35Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 16:36Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 16:36Speaker 05

  Yeah. And I think they show it as like, they're like, oh, well, if you want a credit card on this line of credit, we can give it to you. It's literally just there for the equipment.

• 16:43Brian Preston?

  So debt currently doesn't look to be that much of an issue outside of the student loans. And that's even been under deferment. So we'll, we'll cover that in greater detail. But have y'all ever had any troubles with debt? Cause that's something, another struggle that a lot of Americans have is just consumer debt.

• 16:57Speaker 04

  She, she learned her lessons. I learned mine back in the day too. We, my brother used to work for Dave Ramsey.

• 17:03Brian Preston?

  Okay.

• 17:03Speaker 04

  And so we had the whole, we were paying off credit cards with credit cards back in the day, trying to anyway.

• 17:09Brian Preston?

  Okay.

• 17:09Speaker 04

  And so we did the whole, my boy's mom and I did the whole snowball thing back in the day when we first moved here. And ever since then, we're able to stay out of that hole.

• 17:19Brian Preston?

  Sure.

• 17:19Speaker 04

  And because I am.

• 17:20Speaker 06

  Lesson to learn early on, right?

• 17:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:22Speaker 06

  Early on, you stay away from it.

• 17:24Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so I came into that with at least not a negative, you know, at least not that negative.

• 17:30Brian Preston?

  That's a big benefit.

• 17:30Speaker 05

  And I'm kind of in the same boat. My first husband and I got married really young. We had a car loan and we had some credit card debt and we basically did the Dave Ramsey, like snowball and everything too. We actually ended up paying off all of our debt with the exception of our mortgage at the time, like right before we got divorced. So when we separated and got divorced, we didn't have anything that we had to split. He let me keep the house. I gave him what we had in savings and it was kind of like, that's it.

• 17:55Brian Preston?

  Got it.

• 17:55Speaker 05

  We didn't have kids or anything. And so I moved to Nashville and selling that, the money that I made off that house basically funded my move to Nashville, got my down payment on my house here. And then I was pretty good, had a, not a good year in 2016, basically 2017. I was like the year of Shelby, I just do whatever I want. Cause I was healing myself after a bad relationship. And I racked up some credit card debt, paid that off by the end of 2018.

• 18:20Brian Preston?

  Was that depression, doom spending, or was it rewarding yourself for, because you were now free? What, what, what do you, what do you attribute that to?

• 18:26Speaker 05

  It was a little bit of everything. So I was definitely, I, I mean, I had a hard depression whenever I moved to Nashville, like moved away from my family. I'd literally just gone through a divorce and didn't really give myself time to kind of heal from that. Um, and then I, I was in an abusive relationship, unfortunately. And so it was a lot of different things of like, I'm going to take care of myself and I'm going to just do whatever I want to do. Also, as a side note, in that I had co-signed on a car that I ended up literally having to pay for completely, because the other person I co-signed for never made a single payment. So I had just finished paying that off. So it's like, you know what? I'm going to worry about me. I'm just going to do what I want to do. I got veneers, a beautiful smile. What do I want to do? What's that? You know what I mean?

• 19:09Speaker 05

  It was just, and I was 24, like I was young. And so that was my year. And it's, we're not talking like 50, 60, 70,000.

• 19:16Brian Preston?

  How far did it go? How much debt did you get?

• 19:18Speaker 05

  Maybe 15 to 18,000.

• 19:20Speaker 06

  And you paid it all off in the next year?

• 19:22Brian Preston?

  And was it just a wake up one day like, oh my gosh, what have I done? The year of Shelby has to come to a close or what?

• 19:27Speaker 05

  All right, this is enough. Like relax, you need to calm down. Like let's, let's get back in order. And I mean, that whole time I'd still been, like, once I started my corporate job, I had still been, um, you know, putting money aside in retirement, all of that. I had been doing that, but I had a decent income for a single woman in Nashville. And so I was like, I can splurge on a few things. And yeah, then I buckled down and said, all right, got to be responsible. And I've continued to use credit cards ever since then, but I've just never had a balance. I pay it off. So I've never, zero interest, never paid interest on a credit card since that time. But I continued, we use credit cards and get the points and benefits without having to pay interest.

• 20:03Brian Preston?

  It's kind of like, we say, credit card use is A okay.

• 20:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 20:06Brian Preston?

  But credit card debt, no way.

• 20:07Speaker 06

  I love that y'all, you've like, like, okay, we had this misstep, this thing happened, we learned from it, didn't change. And we had this misstep and this thing happened, we learned from it, didn't change. I just love that you're able to like adjust behavior. What that tells me is that, okay, even if you do feel, okay, maybe we're behind on some of these goals. Cause the only tension I heard is like, okay, we want to pay off student loans, but also want to save for college, but also want to have retirement, have these competing priorities.

• 20:30Speaker 06

  But you guys have already shown like you can do some pretty hard stuff and you can, if you get your mind motivated, you get to move in an awesome direction. So I think this is gonna be a lot of fun.

• 20:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 20:39Speaker 06

  Right? So as we sit right here, net worth of 400,000, let's kind of go through it real quick. Because one of the things we noticed when we went through this is you guys have a lot of cash.

• 20:48Brian Preston?

  A lot of cash.

• 20:48Speaker 06

  Like $143,000 of your 400,000 net worth is cash on hand. Walk us through why that's such a healthy cash position.

• 20:57Brian Preston?

  Are y'all big cash people or is there goals for each one of those things?

• 21:00Speaker 04

  Well, we're trying to figure out what is best to do with that and we're probably gonna alter it based off this conversation. That's really how that goes.

• 21:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, so we've been holding on to it. It's like, I'm not gonna make any moves until I talk to Bo and Brian and I can figure out what it is exactly that would be most beneficial to do with this cash. Because I, I like the idea of, I mean, I opened a brokerage account, so that Fidelity is a brokerage account. And I had it in another brokerage account for a period of time and like did some little dabbles with some investments and stuff like that. But part of my question, part of where I just don't know, my ignorance with it is, how much cash do you actually recommend having on hand versus how much should we invest? Like if I know that we need to purchase a car and I'd like to pay cash in 18 months, is 18 months the window that you keep it in cash or do you invest it?

• 21:47Brian Preston?

  Right.

• 21:48Speaker 05

  If I know that I want to pay for Mason's college in seven years, is that the amount of time that you keep it in cash or do you invest it?

• 21:54Brian Preston?

  Right.

• 21:54Speaker 05

  If we thought we had 18 months for student loans and kind of find out we have two weeks, I'm kind of glad that's not invested. So I'm trying, I, I don't know exactly where that window or what you recommend, that window being.

• 22:06Speaker 04

  We have such, both of us, a strong aversion to debt.

• 22:09Brian Preston?

  Yeah.

• 22:09Speaker 04

  Despite student loans, that neither of us want to ever be in that position again. So we just have this.

• 22:14Speaker 06

  A bunch of cash.

• 22:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, we just have it on there in case, you know, both of our cars crap out tomorrow, we can buy new ones.

• 22:19Speaker 06

  Is part of this cash is like a car fund sitting there? Is that what you're saying?

• 22:22Speaker 04

  Part of it.

• 22:22Speaker 06

  Like for 18 months in the future?

• 22:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:25Speaker 06

  Is that right?

• 22:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I have it written down here, kind of how that money is allocated out. So the 142,000 total, 42,000 of it is emergency fund.

• 22:35Brian Preston?

  Okay.

• 22:35Speaker 05

  So that's our 7,000 burn rate for six months, 42,000.

• 22:40Speaker 06

  That's perfect.

• 22:40Speaker 05

  40,000 of it was earmarked for a new car.

• 22:44Brian Preston?

  Okay.

• 22:44Speaker 05

  I am in a position where I, for my company, I have to have a new, this sounds ridiculous, but in order to get basically the, the car allowance that I get, my car can't be any more than four years old, it can't have more than 60,000 miles on it, dah dah dah dah, or otherwise it's taxed. So in 18 months, I'll hit that mark. So I will need to get a new car. My car's a 2023, like it's not old. It'll go to him.

• 23:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 23:07Speaker 05

  And then his car will go to Mason, and that's kind of what we're planning. But that's why we have kind of a hard timeline of, I know in 18 months, we will have to purchase a new car.

• 23:16Brian Preston?

  I do want to clarify. You said it will be taxed unless it meets these things. You still get it even if it exceeds the, the age?

• 23:23Speaker 06

  Okay, okay.

• 23:23Speaker 05

  Currently, it's tax-free.

• 23:25Brian Preston?

  Okay.

• 23:26Speaker 05

  And that is about $9,000 a year that I get tax-free right now.

• 23:33Brian Preston?

  Okay.

• 23:33Speaker 05

  I don't know if the tax would be, if it would be taxes income, I'm not sure about that.

• 23:38Speaker 06

  It'd probably be ordinary income, what it'd be taxed at. So it'd be taxed at your marginal tax rate, whatever the marginal tax rate you guys fall into.

• 23:44Speaker 05

  Okay, so 22%.

• 23:45Brian Preston?

  I was gonna say 22%.

• 23:47Speaker 05

  So I don't want to pay that tax.

• 23:49Speaker 06

  Well, but I want, but I want you to think through, I want you to think through this, right?

• 23:52Speaker 05

  And that's why we're here.

• 23:53Speaker 06

  $9,000 times a 22% tax rate, you guys live in Tennessee, so there's no state income tax, it's $1,980 of taxes. So I want to make sure I'm hearing you correctly. In order to save $1,980 of taxes this year, I'm gonna go spend $40,000 on a new car.

• 24:11Speaker 05

  Okay, Bo.

• 24:12Speaker 06

  I just want to make sure that I understand the math here.

• 24:16Speaker 05

  It sounds a little silly, yes, when you put it that way. My other, the only other thing that I will mention, his car is 11 or 12 years old.

• 24:25Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 24:25Speaker 05

  One of us will need to get a new car in the next year. You know what I mean? It makes sense to just have mine that's paid off. Go to him, his car, go to Mason, me get a new car. So then it, you know, it's another four years. Now, if we both had relatively new cars and it was like, you know, there's no way that either of us would be getting a new car for another five plus years anyway. Then maybe I could understand like, huh, let's, let's pay the tax or whatever on that. I still think, and I could just be, I just want a new car. Well, you know, I could be, my, my, my judgment could be clouded. But I think knowing that we're going to have to get another car anyway, I think that it would still make sense to go ahead and spend the money on.

• 25:03Speaker 06

  But maybe not at the 18 month mark. The 18 month mark is somewhat is, I don't say arbitrary because there's a thing that happens.

• 25:08Speaker 05

  Right.

• 25:09Speaker 06

  But that thing may not be quite as cataclysmic as you think it is.

• 25:12Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 25:12Speaker 06

  They might be able to stretch it out because how, how old is your car again?

• 25:15Speaker 04

  2014.

• 25:15Speaker 06

  2014. And when will Mason start driving?

• 25:18Speaker 04

  He's got about two and a half years.

• 25:20Speaker 06

  So really, so we may even have a two to three year window potentially and still be able to do that car shuffle and it all line up.

• 25:26Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 25:26Speaker 06

  Is that an accurate assessment?

• 25:27Brian Preston?

  Keep going also on your list though. You had 40, but answer both questions and then keep us going on the.

• 25:32Speaker 05

  Yeah. So yes, sorry if I remember the question. Could we, could that instead of 18 months be two to three years? Yes, potentially it could be two to three years. And in 18 months, I might have a different job. I hope not. I love the company that I work for. But I don't know. All of that could change too. So I know that that is the case. I just want to be prepared in case that is the case.

• 25:49Speaker 06

  Love it.

• 25:50Speaker 05

  Then we have about $16,000 earmarked for Mason's college. My goal or my thinking on that Tennessee, Tennessee promise, amazing. Wish Texas had that. My thinking is that we have $50,000 saved for him. He has to take advantage of the Tennessee promise, do community college, do community service, all of that. And then we would have 50,000, 50, five zero thousand dollars for his junior and senior year at a local in-state, non-private university. We're not going crazy here. I think that that should be plenty. I mean, you know, NTSU for less than that, but that's, that's where I'm coming up with that number, 50,000.

• 26:27Speaker 06

  $50,000 college goal.

• 26:28Speaker 05

  Right. But I have 16, we, we have 16,000.

• 26:31Speaker 06

  Already built towards that.

• 26:33Speaker 05

  Right.

• 26:33Speaker 06

  Great.

• 26:33Brian Preston?

  Just for the audience, like, cause they, they might need the context. If you live in Tennessee and I have a daughter who's now a senior in college. Your first two years of community college are completely free in the state of Tennessee. That's the Tennessee promise. And it's legit. She has a lot of friends that have taken advantage of it. We have employees that have children taking advantage of it. So that's a brilliant education hack if you live in the state of Tennessee. We're from the state of Georgia, which we had the HOOP scholarship, which helped both of us make it through. So I love it when these states get very creative to pay it forward for the next generation.

• 27:08Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 27:09Speaker 04

  And we have a mottled just down the road, so we're going to be good.

• 27:11Brian Preston?

  Yeah, that's awesome.

• 27:13Speaker 06

  All right, so 42 emergency fund, 40,000 new car, 16,000 college. What else you got?

• 27:18Speaker 05

  And then we have $8,500 in a home maintenance fund. And I'm kind of on the fence about this. My aunt is a financial planner and advisor. So I actually talked before I'd heard back from you guys, I talked to her a little bit, like two hours. And she was kind of saying like, you have 42,000 in emergency fund. You don't really need to have 8,500 also earmarked for home maintenance.

• 27:41Speaker 04

  And her house is only a year old.

• 27:42Speaker 05

  And it's also a brand new house. It was a new construction.

• 27:44Speaker 04

  I like it.

• 27:45Speaker 05

  But I have also been in a position where I had to replace an AC unit in a house. I had to do a bunch of crossface work and stuff like, I've been there. But I kind of am under the thought now.

• 27:55Brian Preston?

  I bet your insurance, I mean, I bet your AC is covered for the first five years, for sure. And then if your builder put it nice enough, paid the $500 extra, it might have a 10-year warranty on it. Found that out the hard way that my builder unfortunately put the five-year unit in there, not the 10-year unit.

• 28:10Speaker 05

  So that while, when we submitted all of this to you, that was $8,500 flagged for that. However, I'm more inclined to say, we don't need to have that earmarked. Perfect, great, I love it. We have what's remaining of a honeymoon fund, which is...

• 28:24Speaker 04

  That's definitely going.

• 28:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's $3,773 to be specific. Basically, it's down to 2,000. We booked our last few like excursions and stuff for our honeymoon. We're going on our one-year anniversary. So there's $2,000 that's actually now like...

• 28:40Speaker 06

  Available for something.

• 28:41Brian Preston?

  That's great.

• 28:41Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 28:42Brian Preston?

  We have thoughts on that too.

• 28:43Speaker 05

  Perfect. Well, that was one of the things like I made $217,000 off my house. And so it's like, we can have a honeymoon.

• 28:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 28:51Speaker 05

  We're going to put a lot of money towards a lot of really important, responsible things. And we can take like.

• 28:56Speaker 06

  But making memories is a really important, responsible thing to put money towards. And we're never going to fight folks on that.

• 29:01Speaker 05

  And then SEP IRA, we have, okay, so he has a SEP there. That was just open this year, thanks to you two, because I heard you mention it. I was like, I came home, Dustin, you need a SEP IRA. Why don't you have this? Oh, my mom.

• 29:15Speaker 04

  My mother's a CPA. She had brought this up years ago and I spoke, I was with an Edward Jones guy. And he's like, you don't make enough money to do that right now. Cause I was, at the time, it was just me on my own. And so I just kind of put that on the back burner. And now that we're in this position where we have a dual income and you know, if you do real estate right, it just keeps on escalating. So that's where I'm at now. So we are earmarking, how, 20 what percent?

• 29:39Speaker 05

  25. So right now there's 16, he just had a deal this week. So this number's changed slightly, but according to these numbers, $16,631 is set aside in that SEP. So basically 25% of every check that he gets, every commission check, we put into a vault in our SOFI.

• 29:57Speaker 04

  So we don't overpay, but we're keeping it back.

• 30:00Speaker 05

  Right. Cause my understanding with the SEP is that you have to be very specific about what you, like you can only put up to 25% of your net.

• 30:08Speaker 06

  Mm hmm. That's right.

• 30:10Speaker 05

  Gross.

• 30:10Brian Preston?

  Well, and there's even, there's even more. There's an additional complication since he's a sole proprietor, that there'll be a self-employment offset. So it might, it might be only you get to do 20, somewhere between 18 to 20%. But, but wait, there's more. Is that one of the things we've been sharing, cause we've been doing content since 2006. So yes, we love the SEP IRA, cause that was in the past. The only way you could go back in time to take a deduction for a prior tax year. But the, the government has actually changed the rules here in the last two years to now where solo 401ks can actually go back in time as well. That's a new provision within the last few years. And so we're, we're. Probably going to talk about why you might want to consider taking this up into a solo 401k

• 30:55Brian Preston?

  because then you get to do all the benefits of the SEP with the profit sharing from the company that 20, 18 to 20%, but then you also get to do the salary deferral just like you do as a traditional employee.

• 31:07Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 31:07Brian Preston?

  So you could save more with the same amount of income, which is exactly what for Dustin specifically. If you're allocating 25%, we could do the 18 to 20% that's the profit sharing and then backfill through salary deferrals the other side of it. So lots of opportunities.

• 31:24Speaker 06

  And how neat, like right now, you're putting this in your vault in order to be able to do this next year.

• 31:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:30Speaker 06

  When you do the salary deferrals through a solo 401k, what if you could have that money working for you every single month? Like we're just going to take 23.5, divide it by 12 and every month, just put that in.

• 31:39Brian Preston?

  That'd be great.

• 31:39Speaker 06

  Get those money, that those dollars working. It'll be, you'll have your 401k now. You'll have your own 401k, right?

• 31:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, I've finally grown up. I'm 44.

• 31:51Speaker 05

  That's what we're doing right now with the SEP, but this sounds like really exciting news. So we might be changing that, but just knowing that we don't want to put too much in and then have to pull it out. We basically talked to his mom who does our taxes and said, hey, you know, if we could basically before we officially file, tell us exactly what that number is so we can put in exactly that dollar amount.

• 32:08Speaker 06

  That's great.

• 32:08Speaker 05

  And then we won't overpay. And so then if there's any, you know, if it is in fact only 20% and we've been setting aside 25, then that extra money is yeah, reallocated to something else. And then I don't know all the numbers. I mean, you're, those are the main ones. We also have an account that has anywhere from $2,000 to $15,000 in his tax account. Cause again, self-employed, so 25% goes into that SEP every paycheck and 30% goes into a tax vault every paycheck.

• 32:38Speaker 06

  I love this. You got, the way that you do your household accounting is so good.

• 32:44Brian Preston?

  It's a forced scarcity plan. It is.

• 32:46Speaker 06

  I love that.

• 32:48Speaker 05

  Quarterly, he just paid his tax for last quarter. So now that accounts down to like $2,000, but he, we have that money. So we're not having to worry about each quarter.

• 32:55Speaker 06

  We almost always have an overage there.

• 32:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, we always do have a little bit of it, not a ton, but a little bit, little cushion. Then anything above and beyond that up until a week ago was kind of, okay, that's what we're saving for a student loan payoff. Because it was interest free. Our understanding was it was going to be interest free until basically January 2027. So we had 18 months on that. So it's like, all right, any extra that we're saving and then we're setting aside, we're just bulking up that account.

• 33:22Speaker 06

  In order to be able to pay off the student loan.

• 33:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, 57,000.

• 33:25Speaker 06

  Love that. Well, you guys were great in terms of like laying out your goals for us. She said, hey, we really want to knock out student loans, right? We had, at the time, we thought we had a window in which we could do that. Hey, we really want to save for college for Mason. And oh, by the way, we want to be able to retire one day.

• 33:39Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 33:39Speaker 06

  And so we thought one of the things that might be kind of helpful is if we took each one of these three goals and talk about, okay, where are you guys at currently in terms of progressing towards that goal? What is your current plan that you've laid out for us in terms of how you want to attack that goal? And if you do it that way, where does that put you? And then what we've said is, hey, I wonder, might there be some ways we could optimize? Might there be some ways that we could allow your money to just work a little bit harder for you maybe than it is presently? And so that's what we want to kind of lay out for you. How does that, does that sound reasonable?

• 34:08Speaker 05

  Wonderful.

• 34:08Speaker 06

  Awesome. All right. So let's look at the student loans first, because this is one that's kind of like top of mind, high priority, right? So we think about where your student loans are currently. Here are the facts. We know that right now you have about $57,000 in student loans. Both federal loans, they both were in deferment. And we thought that we were going to have until January of 2027 to be able to build up cash to pay those off. So we got to get to 57,000. And right now, as of when you said the numbers, you guys were right at about 12,000. So when we think about the progress that we're making towards that goal, we're about 22% of the way there already, right? And you said, okay, we want to take any excess capital that we have coming. And you said it was about $1,500 a month that was left over, right? We had about

• 34:50Speaker 06

  $15 a month of free cash flow on average, we would kind of pull this out of your budget, on average, that we could deploy towards this goal. So if we just start right now at the 12,000 and we save $1,500 a month, every single month from now until December of 2026, we'd get to about $39,000. So we have 39,000 of the 57, so we'd be like 68% of our way to our goal.

• 35:16Speaker 06

  But things changed. We thought that that was gonna be

• 35:19Brian Preston?

  We got this update yesterday.

• 35:20Speaker 06

  A viable strategy, right?

• 35:21Brian Preston?

  Share with the audience what the big update was.

• 35:24Speaker 06

  Well, since

• 35:24Brian Preston?

  You've already alluded to it a little bit.

• 35:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is, uh, okay. Problems that hang around your neck from when you were too young to know any better.

• 35:31Brian Preston?

  Yeah.

• 35:32Speaker 04

  Is really what this is and a whole generation. I could go, I could get all into that. People who are enslaved financially.

• 35:38Speaker 06

  And you're not alone in this. This is a big issue for a lot of Americans right now.

• 35:41Speaker 04

  And it was a time in the late 90s when like you get a degree. It doesn't matter how you get it. You just get it. So with that told, I got $57,000 left on my student loans that due to changes, I was in the SAVE program and due to changes in that very recently, we are now supposed to begin payments on those as of August 1st, two weeks from now.

• 36:03Speaker 05

  Well, hang on. The government was really kind and said, you don't actually have to start making payments again. We're just going to start charging you interest again.

• 36:11Brian Preston?

  So you still have the deferment.

• 36:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:15Speaker 05

  Thanks so much. So kind of you.

• 36:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, they had their little thing they were reading off of for sure, but it's a 7% flat. And, uh, we have what it takes to get rid of it. We just want to know exactly what the, and because of our aversion to debt, we're just like, well, let's get this out of our lives finally.

• 36:30Speaker 06

  Well, and you know, we think that.

• 36:33Speaker 00

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• 37:16Speaker 07

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Day.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Filmed for IMAX.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Make them remember you.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Leaping, November 20th, rated PG-13.

• 37:31Speaker 06

  When it comes to making financial decisions, there's a process through which you can work to figure out what's the best way for me to utilize my next dollar. We call it the Financial Order of Operations. 0% student loans in our mind would fall into the low interest camp. But now for a 43-year-old, if you have 7% student loans, all of a sudden that gets kind of fast-tracked. In our mind, that goes all the way to step three. That now becomes high interest debt. So in our opinion, it should be a high priority to get that thing knocked out pretty quickly. So this is what we said. If we want to think about how to extinguish that student loan debt, we know that right now we have the $12,000 currently saved up. We know that we have this home maintenance fund that's kind of like doubling up. We did not know how comfortable

• 38:14Speaker 06

  you were going to be playing with it. So we said, what if, what if we just take a little bit off, right? We said, what if we take $2,500 from that home maintenance fund? We took $40,000 from the car fund, because at the time, we thought we had, you know, maybe 18, and we were hoping more. We actually have some time on that. And then if we could find another $2,350, either from possibly college savings, it sounds more like maybe the home maintenance fund. If we were to combine those together today, you'd be able to write a check and pay off the student loans.

• 38:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:43Speaker 05

  And that's kind of what my plan, once I heard that, I was like, all right, well, we're just paying it off. And basically, everything that's in the Fidelity account with a little extra on top is just going to that. And now our car fund is depleted, and we, you know, have a little bit. So this is pretty much on track with what I had already talked about. Like, I'm not going to make any moves until we actually talk to the guys.

• 39:04Speaker 06

  Yeah, I wanted to hear.

• 39:05Speaker 05

  In case.

• 39:05Speaker 06

  Somebody who doesn't have the emotional connection to this, think about it.

• 39:07Brian Preston?

  Well, you've heard us talk about on the show that the Financial Order of Operations, everybody thinks it's just essentially walking up steps as you go. No, there's life changes happen where you all of a sudden find out that, no, this thing is due in two weeks, or we're going to pay 7%. Where you guys are very fortunate, kudos to you, is you Have this pot of money that y'all earmarked. Yes, it, it, it, Apple Cart's turn, it turns over the Apple Cart on the priority of where you're sitting it, but you're going to be able to extinguish this and still be able to hit the ground running and accomplish a lot of goals.

• 39:38Speaker 05

  I'm extremely grateful. Like this is upsetting to hear this, but they, we could be in a much more difficult position. So I am, don't get me wrong. I am extremely like, okay, we'll rebuild up a car fund. And if we need to get a car loan at a low interest rate, like it is what it is in 18 months, two, three years.

• 39:55Speaker 06

  Maybe 36 months. We got time.

• 39:57Brian Preston?

  And because you have $1,500 a month that you are putting on the student loan, that is now free and clear to be used however you see fit. I am curious though, for you Dustin, you've had this, I mean, this thing's been part of the family. I mean, cause you've had student loans since you were in your 20s, 18 to 20s. So now extinguishing this at 43, how's that feel to know that this will be completely behind you?

• 40:18Speaker 04

  Again, things I'd been resigned to. It feels like an albatross, but it's been around my neck that I just got used to the weight, you know, where people have a disability. They just feel like, oh, my pain level is X, so that feels normal. And getting rid of it. Now, if it, I don't even know what that's going to feel like.

• 40:32Brian Preston?

  Yeah, it's gonna be like a weighted vest has been taken off.

• 40:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's amazing. And it's almost like I feel a sense of guilt about it. Like I, I brought this into, you know, I brought this into our world and it is what it is. And I can't undo choices that I made when I was a child, essentially, even though I was adult. You know, you, you make choices and you live with them. And here we are. I'm glad to get this out of my life because I got way better things I can do with $57,000.

• 40:57Speaker 06

  When what a wonderful opportunity. You said, oh, I didn't know what I was doing. I mean, what a great position you are now to tell Mason when he get, hey, son, here's how, here's how money works. Here's how debt works. Here's the things that I wish someone could have told me at that time. I think that's awesome. So yeah, it stinks that it happened, but you were able to take that and turn it around and use it to be something super powerful. And by the way, you're only 43, which is not that old. So you've got plenty of opportunity moving forward, which I think is great.

• 41:22Brian Preston?

  Just in the short term, time I've gotten to know you guys. Shelby seems very generous on the fact that like we'll talk about the college funding in a minute. And then even how we're paying off this college. I feel like you're carrying some of that guilt that she's not holding on you necessarily. So this is going to be great to have it extinguished and you'll just, and you're also exceeding like your real estate income. You're way ahead of where you were even last year.

• 41:47Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:47Brian Preston?

  You just said you got another check that y'all deposited.

• 41:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:50Brian Preston?

  And I loved how y'all do the savings goals is that months that you have big checks coming, because being a real estate agent is not, it's not like you're getting square cubes of perfect income every month.

• 42:00Speaker 04

  June, July are good.

• 42:01Brian Preston?

  But you, but you've been exceeding it and it's nice. I love how y'all pay yourself first. So it's kind of pushing even more into the household, which is an awesome thing.

• 42:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. And we have a buffer built into the way we do our budgets so that whenever those lean months do come.

• 42:16Speaker 06

  You're prepared for it.

• 42:17Speaker 04

  Basically after Thanksgiving and I have to wait until January or February to get paid again sometimes. So.

• 42:23Brian Preston?

  Y'all are equipped though to plan for that, it seems, based upon how y'all are allocating everything. I feel like y'all have that well underhand.

• 42:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:29Speaker 05

  And that was the other thing that I forgot in this list. We have like nine, $9,9600 that's in our savings. That's just basically three months of expenses that we need from his paycheck. So even if we get through November, December, January, we can still like, we don't have to touch emergency fund. We don't have to do any of that. We just have it there. So that is always replenished. SEP is done for, tax is done first, then SEP, then that little bucket is replenished. Then anything else from there goes into other savings goals.

• 42:59Speaker 06

  I love it. So one of the other savings goals that you guys have said now is okay, we've got your student loans, you've got your education knocked out. Now let's talk about Mason's education, right? Cause that was another goal that we had. Now here is one thing you guys are going to have to sit down and figure out moving forward is like, we're kind of going through these goals in chronological order. You guys will have to figure out how, how important are the goal? Like, how do we, you know, frame the importance of these goals in terms of our long-term strategy that we want to employ. But here's what we know about college funding right now, based on what you told us. Hey, we really want to have $50,000 saved up for Mason. We've got about five years to do that. Right? Uh, you guys currently have been saving $6,000 a year towards this goal. Am I understanding that correctly?

• 43:39Speaker 05

  Yeah. Basically I started it with $10,000 whenever I sold the house. And then we've been putting in $6,000 a year with the intention to have 50,000, like I calculated that out specifically. Figured $6,000 a year, like that should be easy enough to save. And then that would put us to the 50,000. In theory, in seven years, like if we have it a few years early, cool, but seven years is after he would finish community college.

• 44:02Speaker 06

  I love it. So what we did is we said, okay, if we're actually doing this, we're on this trajectory and we have $16,000 and we're going to save $6,000 a year. It's going to move us to where at age 18, even before the two years of community college, if we're just assuming a 5% rate of return, right? Like, you know, some part cash, maybe some part growth, if you're doing a 529 or something like that, you're going to have about $54,000. Like that's so before college, before first two years start.

• 44:31Speaker 04

  We'd be two years ahead, essentially.

• 44:33Speaker 06

  Yes, you're kind of two years ahead. So what we said, and we look at this, and you guys have to figure out your comfort level, even saving $6,000 a year might not be the absolute exact number to try to hit that $50,000 goal. You may be overfunded on this goal. What we said is if the goal was to have the 50,000 by 18, you're already on track to have 109% of that goal funded, right? So you're a little, I don't want to say overplanning, but if the goal is 50, you're well on your way to doing that. So that's one you can kind of like, put a check mark on and even think, okay, is there, are there some dollars that we could even maybe take and deploy to another goal elsewhere? Does that make sense?

• 45:09Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 45:10Speaker 06

  And what I love is it sounds like you guys have already had this conversation with Mason around, hey, here's the plan. We're going to do this for the first two years and then we're going to do this for the next two years. I think that's fantastic, having that conversation five years out. I mean, we, we talked to a lot of folks and we'll talk to their, you know, junior, senior kids and be like, what do you think about college? And they're, oh, no idea. Haven't really thought about it. I love that you're starting that conversation early. That's amazing. You guys are doing a great job.

• 45:34Brian Preston?

  And it's a huge head start. As you've already talked about, the little amount of debt, if you can lower the, how much debt you come out of college with, it is a huge head start in life. And that's the big thing, that you're paying it forward from, by y'all setting this up for, for Mason. So that's an incredible opportunity for him in the long term.

• 45:51Speaker 06

  Now, you've done all kinds of calculations, right? Like you guys have given us all these numbers, like I've done this calculation, I've done this calculation. You did another calculation that you gave to us that, hey, we want to be able to retire.

• 46:01Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:02Speaker 06

  And I have this retirement number in my head. What, what was your retirement number? Do you remember what it was?

• 46:07Speaker 05

  I think I told Megan, 3 million.

• 46:09Speaker 06

  3 million dollars.

• 46:09Speaker 05

  2.5 to 3, but I think 3 million.

• 46:11Speaker 06

  So I'd just be curious, how'd you guys come up with that? Where'd that goal come from? How'd you discern that that is the magic number for the household?

• 46:21Speaker 06

  He's like Shelby told me so. That's how I found that.

• 46:23Speaker 05

  This mysterious 4% rule.

• 46:25Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 46:26Speaker 05

  My understanding is you want to, you only want to pull out 4% of whatever you have in retirement per year so that, to keep it really simple, the account basically replenishes, replenishes itself.

• 46:41Speaker 06

  Kind of like living off the interest sort of idea.

• 46:43Speaker 05

  Right. So 4%, I think some people say 3, some people might say a little bit more. I think you guys did a video, Dave Ramsey might say a little bit higher, but I think 4% is kind of what I've heard was about average. And so I think if I did $100,000 a year at 4%, I think that's what put us at the 2.5 million number. And so I'm like, well, let's bump it up a little bit.

• 47:07Speaker 05

  Well, Hope's like, okay, I'm, we, I don't want to have a mortgage at that time. So like, we should have a paid off house. So we, you know, that money that we put to the mortgage, that we'd be able to live. So yeah, I think we would be able to live off $100,000, maybe a little bit, yeah, a little bit more. So I put it up to 3.

• 47:20Brian Preston?

  And I have one more clarifier. $120,000, is that in today's dollars? Or are you thinking you want $120,000 when you reach retirement?

• 47:30Speaker 04

  The idea is whatever that would be with guest estimated inflation or whatever.

• 47:35Speaker 05

  I think that that's might be where, I think that might be where I'm a little confused on the 4%.

• 47:40Brian Preston?

  We have thoughts, but it's, it's something just to share you the details. I just want to clarify.

• 47:45Speaker 06

  It's just a really interesting thing. Cause so obviously if you had $3 million today and you were doing the 4%, then you live off $120,000 in today's dollars. That's $10,000 a month, which is great. Do you think you could live the life that you want to live on the way, the way that you want to live it on $10,000 a month?

• 48:02Speaker 04

  I know I could, yeah.

• 48:04Speaker 05

  I think that we could. I mean, we live off $7,000 a month now and 2,300 of that is our mortgage. So if we nix the mortgage and that's seven plus a little bit more, I think that that would be doable.

• 48:16Speaker 04

  Really high, actually.

• 48:17Speaker 06

  So that's kind of where I am arriving to is, okay, if 7,000 is what we're living on now, and that even includes the mortgage. Is our number really 3 million? Cause we're going to show you, you gave us the number 3 million and we're going to show you what would be necessary to get to 3 million. But one of the things we want you to take away from this today is, is 3 million really the number? Is it, or if the number is something different than 3 million, does that open up opportunities for us earlier on than maybe we had even thought would be possible?

• 48:45Speaker 05

  Please, I love that. And maybe it's not 3 million. This is just, this is all based on what I've been able to piece together from YouTube University and my mom and my aunt and Google. So I am in no way, like this is why I'm so thankful that we're here.

• 49:00Speaker 06

  I love it.

• 49:00Brian Preston?

  And Bo was about to share a lot, but I want to set the table. One more thing is just a financial planner's job is we try to be as conservative as possible.

• 49:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:08Brian Preston?

  Because it is a hard threshold when you tell a client that they can retire. So we usually put in all, you know, conservative investment assumptions, meaning on rates of return. We put in inflation conservative adjustments. So I think what we're going to show you is falls under the umbrella of conservative, but that's why it's going to be some flexibility on maybe this could adapt and get to Bo's question is, is 3 million the right answer?

• 49:33Speaker 06

  Cause what we said is if right now your goal is for $3 million in today's dollars, by the time that Dustin gets to 60, 65 years old, that would generate about $120,000 of income in today's dollars. So based on where you guys currently are right now, you have a little over $200,000 currently saved up.

• 49:51Speaker 05

  And that's for both of our retirements, right?

• 49:53Speaker 06

  That's for both of you. Yep. So we're just, we're considering it a household. So when we say retirement, we're thinking about when he hits age 65, that's retirement, just to kind of keep it simple. What we know is right now with about $200,000 or so currently saved and invested between the two of you, those dollars without saving another dollar right now would likely grow to about 1.34 million dollars. Now we just assumed a 7.7% rate of return, given your age. So already you're on track for like a million dollar plus portfolio, just on the hard work you've done thus far. But you guys are still saving. You've already kind of laid out for us how you save. Matter of fact, let's look at how you're actually saving because right now you're maxing out Roth IRAs,

• 50:34Speaker 06

  both of you. You said you're doing this compartmentalizing where you have this 25% of the real estate income that we're putting in the SEP. That's another 20,000. And Shelby, you're putting a ton into your 401k, 21% deferral plus a 4% employer contribution. So you guys are saving like $60,000 a year. So it's pretty stellar. So we have 200,000 saved up. If you just take that 200,000, you continue to save just this 60,000 between now and the time that you turn 65, the number turns into 4.6 million dollars.

• 51:05Speaker 04

  I like overshooting.

• 51:06Speaker 06

  So let's be clear though, when you're 65, 4.6 million will not be the same as 4.6 million today. We do have to factor in inflation because if we apply a 4% withdrawal rate to 4.6 million, and then we bring it back into present value terms, that amount of money would generate about $97,000 a year for you. So we haven't hit our 120 goal. We hit about 100,000 based on your current plan. But we wanted to be able to show you, okay, if our goal is 120,000 in today's dollars, how much more are we going to save? What's the number actually need to be? And so we figured out that if you saved an extra $1,667 a month, right?

• 51:46Speaker 06

  That would be the magic number to save. Then by 65, you would likely hit a portfolio of around 5.8 million. And when you turn 65, 5.8 million would generate an income, assuming a 4% withdrawal rate, of the equivalent of 120,000 today.

• 52:03Speaker 05

  Okay. Okay.

• 52:04Speaker 06

  So the summary here is if 3 million were the magic number, which I'm not convinced that it is, but if it were the magic number, there is probably a shortfall in savings. So some of these other places you have money going, you have to find, okay, how could we save an extra 1,500 to 1,700 dollars a month in order to move in that direction? When I tell you guys that, give me some feedback. If I said, hey, you gotta save an extra, because it comes up to about 20 grand a year. If you had to save an extra 20 grand a year on top of what you're doing.

• 52:30Speaker 04

  Well, it all comes down to me essentially because her salary is set. She has some, you know. Bonuses and things like that, but for me, like, real estate is where the swings can get higher, low, depending. So, I mean, as I'm, I've been in real estate for six years, but I've only really been licensed for three. So like, I'm still getting that traction underneath, even though I hit the ground running pretty well. So, the idea is, if I'm making a hundred K on average, or what my goal is annually, that that is going to incrementally step up, however that can happen. That is the only way I can see where I can, where that money could come from, essentially, is basically another deal every month.

• 53:12Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 53:12Speaker 04

  Which is, I mean, I'm happy with that anyway.

• 53:15Speaker 06

  Right, right.

• 53:16Speaker 04

  But, that's my initial thought.

• 53:18Speaker 06

  But it's doable. I'm hearing you say, this is, it's, it's, this is doable, right?

• 53:25Speaker 04

  I gotta, I mean, I'm working as hard as I can. Yeah, that's, that's all I can say about that.

• 53:31Speaker 06

  So, the question that I would then ask is, is this what's necessary? So, you gave us the number of three million. The question I'd say is, okay, well, do we really, if we, again, I'm just doing very simple math here. Right now, you guys live off of seven thousand dollars a month. We know that twenty-three hundred of that's a mortgage. So, if you take that out, you're really living on about five thousand dollars a month. In order for you guys to be able to retire, do you need to have twice as much of a lifestyle as you currently have? Go from five thousand in spending to ten thousand in spending?

• 54:00Speaker 04

  No, especially when we were talking about, we won't have a mortgage, at whatever point.

• 54:04Speaker 05

  We won't have a mortgage, and then Mason will be out of the house, too. So, you know, monthly grocery bill alone.

• 54:11Brian Preston?

  Teenage boys.

• 54:13Speaker 05

  A lot lower. So, no, I, I think it is realistic that, uh, less than ten thousand dollars a year.

• 54:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:20Speaker 05

  I also don't, well, I'm like, torn. Do I think that less than ten thousand dollars, like, as we talk through this, do I think that less than ten thousand dollars could be doable? Yes. I also don't want to look at that number and say, oh, that's too much. It has to, you know, less than ten thousand dollars has to be, like, I don't want to short.

• 54:35Speaker 04

  Right.

• 54:36Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 54:36Speaker 05

  My, you know what I mean? Like, if we need to do that, maybe we find something in between. Like, I don't think that this is maybe quite it, but I think that less than ten thousand dollars is probably reasonable.

• 54:45Speaker 06

  Well, I think one of the concerns that we had is we We were talking is it seemed like hey, there were some we're concerned. We don't know if we're going to do all these goals. We feel like we might be behind the eight ball. We feel like maybe we haven't done the things and so we have to catch up, have to catch up, have to catch up. What we actually recognize is that you guys are doing a lot of stuff really, really right and you're moving in a really, really good direction. I hope that that's fueled to keep you moving in the right direction, less so than this burdensome thing of, oh my gosh, it's not going to work out because for all intents and purposes, you guys, yeah, maybe the beginning wasn't exactly the way you would have drawn it up. But at this point, you guys have a great plan in place.

• 55:24Speaker 05

  And that's what I needed to hear. Really, I needed someone to look at everything and say, okay, all good, like everything will be fine because I, I don't know. I just get into a tizzy of it's not enough and it's not enough and it's not enough and we're behind and I don't know if we're ever going to be able to catch up and all of that.

• 55:39Brian Preston?

  And I heard you echo some of that, that concern is you feeling behind and I know you're in, you know, kind of carrying the weight of this or organizing it. I would encourage you all to think about it in bands of where you could go on, you could have a minimum amount that needs to be funded every year and then you could have the aspirational amount. Because you already practice a forced scarcity type structure where this thing is an automated process to where if you have extra money coming in, you're pulling it in. It's not just going out the door into extra consumption naturally. So as long as you're hitting those minimum numbers, kind of what you, where you already were, that was already going to take you over $4 million. But then in the good years, as you get more and more traction in the real estate industry, yeah, why not see if we can hit some of the stretch goals?

• 56:24Brian Preston?

  Because then it allows you to maybe even reevaluate your goals, reevaluate what you, you know, are the trips bigger? Is lifestyle a little bit better? Is it okay that we're replacing the cars a little bit sooner? All these things kind of come into play after you make it past the minimum and you start hitting more of those aspirational goals.

• 56:41Speaker 05

  I think the other part of the question that I have, talking about the retirement as a household, it's great. I don't know if it takes into consideration the fact that we're 10 years apart in age. So I want to make sure that he, there's enough money in his name.

• 56:56Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 56:56Speaker 05

  That whenever we get to that point, if I want to retire a little bit early, or that there is just enough for both of us to live off of until my retirement accounts hit the age where I can start pulling tax.

• 57:08Speaker 06

  Actually pulling money out at 59 and a half.

• 57:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. So I think that's the other part that I'm kind of like, ah, it's a concern a little bit, but I don't know exactly how to like verbalize that and how to look at it. So I don't know if you have any insight on that.

• 57:19Brian Preston?

  For sure.

• 57:19Speaker 06

  Well, one of the things that we did is we put together a little bit, it's sort of like a pseudo foo for you in terms of how you guys think about your retirement savings. Cause right now we know that you're going to max out the Roth IRAs, you're going to do that, 7,000, 7,000. We also know that we're going to do retirement contributions for both of you. So we're going to do 401K for Shelby, you're already doing that, the 21 plus the four. And we're going to do some sort of retirement contributions for Dustin. So it's going to be either the SEP IRA, which is a great solution. We would probably say a solo 401K might be a better solution because then you can also do salary deferrals throughout the year and it's going to help for budgeting. Like, hey, I know you're maxing out your 401K and I'm maxing out my 401K. And then whatever you have left over, then you can do the profit sharing type stuff,

• 58:03Speaker 06

  similar to the way that you do the SEP. But you've already kind of, instead of mentally accounting and having to put it in a bucket to the side, you can just fund it in real time, every time a check comes in. And then you have this other additional investing. And this is the part where I think.

• 58:15Brian Preston?

  This is what she's getting at.

• 58:17Speaker 06

  Where you're, the question you're asking is, hey, I want to make sure that our gap fund, the fund that's going to cover between whenever I retire, he retires, and I'm able to actually access my assets, you guys are going to have to prioritize how you fund those buckets. It's why we talk about inside of step seven. Step seven becomes, once you're at that 25% savings rate, you really got to think about how you're going to use the money. And you guys may arrive at the conclusion to, okay, yeah, we could do profit sharing into Dustin's solo 401K, but that doesn't make as much sense because we ought to be putting this in the after-tax brokerage account. And we ought to be building a gap fund. And that might be where that extra $20,000, $20,000 a year goes into. And you can imagine if you put $20,000 into that gap fund over the next 20 years,

• 59:01Speaker 06

  you're talking about probably approaching seven figures just in that singular fund to be able to bridge that gap until you get to 59 and a half.

• 59:08Brian Preston?

  There, a lot of modeling could be done on this, but you're very smart. You have great instincts and the thought that, look, with you, the 10-year age gap and then. Dustin is having to build this up. Will it get to a critical mass that it will cover both of you since you, your assets won't be at the retirement age. There's still, we could, you can annuitize a portion of your IRAs, but I love the thought of y'all building this bridge account with taxable money because that just makes it more flexible for retiring whenever you want. But it's also going to open up other opportunities as y'all just need more access points to money, you know, whether it's, you know, investments or it's cars or it's lifestyle.

• 59:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 59:48Brian Preston?

  The taxable account is just so easy to get to. Whereas sometimes retirement accounts, we love them. That's why in the financial order of operations, you know, really when you, when you get to five and six, these are very, and even two, these are all very tax favored savings opportunities. It is exactly what Bo said. Seven is where you're thinking about how do we need to use this money? And maybe we back into the math of we make sure the account structure works that way.

• 1:00:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:13Brian Preston?

  Because it's easy when you're younger, let's, you know, let the government fund this through tax savings. But as you're getting closer and closer, you want to say, wait a minute, let's start thinking about how we can use this money in a tax efficient way as well.

• 1:00:24Speaker 05

  That makes a lot more sense. And I think that was kind of the idea with the fidelity, the money market account before you realized that all that has to be paid sooner rather than later. It's like, okay, well, some of that can be invested and like, we can start that brokerage account. We're just gonna be set back a little bit, but we'll still, you know, we'll fund that again and we'll keep it in that brokerage account, taxable brokerage account.

• 1:00:44Brian Preston?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:44Speaker 05

  That savings goal could be part of, it's not, it's not an additional $1,500 a month plus whatever we were trying to save anyway. Like, we're already saving the $1,500 a month.

• 1:00:55Speaker 06

  It's just a matter of where you're saving.

• 1:00:56Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:00:56Speaker 06

  Where are you putting it to work?

• 1:00:57Speaker 05

  So that's not as intimidating to me. I guess for some reason, I'm thinking like, we already do the $1,500 a month and then we have to double what we're saving every month. Okay. That's a little bit like, where are we gonna, where are we gonna cut down on things? I really like to do Pilates and I don't want to cut my Pilates, right?

• 1:01:11Speaker 06

  Obviously, right?

• 1:01:12Speaker 05

  I make a decent income. I want to do some things, not extravagant. Okay. So that makes me feel a little bit better now that I'm understanding it a little bit differently. Do you have questions on it?

• 1:01:22Speaker 04

  Well, I need to ingest it really.

• 1:01:23Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:01:24Brian Preston?

  Well, you would ask a question earlier, Shelby, about when do you know when's cash and when to invest? And I just want to give you some general guidelines is that when things are within 18 to 36 months, it's a no brainer, keep that in cash.

• 1:01:36Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:01:37Brian Preston?

  So if you have any goals and your instincts were already telling you about that. And that's why even when we talk about the college savings, that's, that's about five to six years. That's the only one that's kind of in that gray zone.

• 1:01:47Speaker 05

  That's toe in the line.

• 1:01:48Brian Preston?

  That you probably want to do a very conservative mix to where maybe a portion of it could be invested, but a large chunk of it is going to stay very liquid because when you get into that five years, that's starting to feel kind of mid level goals that you can start investing in. And then beyond seven years, let it rip that you can actually do diversified equity type investments because you should have enough time there to kind of live out whatever volatility is coming your way. But that's the way you, because what you're trying to avoid is having to make a desperate decision of selling something at the world's worst time if there's a volatile period.

• 1:02:22Speaker 05

  Right. Which to answer your question from before, why are we so cash heavy? That's kind of, that's the answer because everything that we were looking at, obviously emergency fund, we want to have fairly liquid, right? And then car fund, college, like you said, kind of toes line student loan. Like it felt like everything was kind of the next two years ish that we would want to have it available anyway. So that's why I was on the fence about, you know, should we invest this or should we not? So I, I mean, I have it in some CDs and high yield savings, some different things that are getting a little bit better interest than what just our high yield savings is, but still I can pull it if I need to without penalty from the CDs.

• 1:02:59Speaker 06

  And we think about the 1500, like that extra savings that you guys might do in that gap account. We'd love for that to be invested. That would not be like a cash holding. That would be like a true equity type investment.

• 1:03:08Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:03:08Speaker 06

  So that it can grow. Because one of the beautiful benefits of being 33 and 43 years old is your wealth multiplier is still super, super strong.

• 1:03:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:15Speaker 06

  I mean, cash yields are great, but you gotta get the money working if you want to be able to capitalize on the wealth multiplier.

• 1:03:21Speaker 05

  Right. Yeah. So that makes sense.

• 1:03:23Brian Preston?

  And then on goals, because that's the other thing, because I love that you do systems where you kind of like set it and forget it and then it's automated. I love how you're doing that. But a lot of times when people set automated systems, they let them on autopilot for too long. You will need to look at goals like the education funding because he's so close that you won't be five years long. It will be three years soon. And then you're like, well, okay, more of this needs to be cash. And then you'll start, you know, curtailing or coming out of some of those equity investments at that point.

• 1:03:51Speaker 05

  Which leads me into a controversial and my upbringing conversation about 529s.

• 1:03:59Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:03:59Speaker 05

  My mom and dad both set aside oodles of money into 529s for my brother, sister and I.

• 1:04:05Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:04:05Speaker 05

  I was the only one that went to a traditional college and even then I did it like later in life. And so my mom has this, to me, it seems very, like when she talks about it, it seems like very stressed of like, there's tens of thousands of dollars stuck in these 529s that I can't pull out because no one's going to school. And so, you know, some of it can be used for Mason, some of it can be used for my niece and nephew, like, great. But I don't want to be stuck in that position. Now, since talking to my aunt, my aunt's has kind of enlightened me on it. My aunt's like, she can pull it out if she just paid the penalty, like she's being cheap. So.

• 1:04:39Speaker 06

  And it's penalty and taxes only on the earnings, not the money that she put in there. So like, there are ways, like you, yes, you can get that money and the tax laws have even now changed in the past couple of years, where those dollars can even flow into Roth IRA for the beneficiaries.

• 1:04:54Speaker 05

  And so now I'm kind of thinking, my mom is extremely frugal, which is part of how she has made this amazing life for herself and she's financially secure, but she lives as if.

• 1:05:04Speaker 06

  She's gonna run out tomorrow.

• 1:05:07Speaker 05

  No, she's a financial miser, a little bit, a little bit. And she's gonna watch this and I'm sorry, mom. There's a fine line there. I love that you're calling her out on it though. And I mean, her house is paid off, like, but she never remarried, like she's very independent. And so I get a lot of that from her, but I have to remind myself, like, I don't want to be all, like, I want to take the good qualities of that and still live my life. Like, and so I find this, I try to find this balance. Anyway, the 529, it's like, how much of it should we, behind the scenes, Mason's in the room, hearing this conversation. And I mean, we'll put aside $50,000, but if he decides not to go to school, I'm not just gonna give him $50,000.

• 1:05:48Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 1:05:50Brian Preston?

  It can be used for trade school.

• 1:05:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:05:53Brian Preston?

  It can be used. There's all kind of opportunities. They most improved account structure is 529s because even even the most recent tax legislation, if you had K through 12 education goals, they went from $10,000 a year funding to now $20,000. So you know, and that that pertains to if you wanted to pass it down to relatives and others. So there's lots of ways to kind of clean out a 529 and without paying taxes.

• 1:06:18Speaker 05

  And so that's what I'm thinking of maybe like putting part of it in a 529 and then keeping part of it maybe in more of like a traditional savings or investable, like something like that.

• 1:06:27Brian Preston?

  Well, your goal is not that crazy. 50,000 for education is not the wildest thing.

• 1:06:32Speaker 06

  Right. He's not going Ivy League.

• 1:06:33Brian Preston?

  Run a huge risk of overfunding the cost of college. College, I think, can't keep running at the cost that I mean, going up every year with inflation like it is. But I do think it's going to be expensive.

• 1:06:44Speaker 05

  And I'm not so.

• 1:06:45Brian Preston?

  For the foreseeable future.

• 1:06:46Speaker 05

  I'm not so worried that the $50,000 would be more than what he would need for college. My concern is if he chooses not to, or if he chooses to do trade school. I'm a cosmetologist, licensed cosmetologist. We didn't talk about my career, but I went. I did trade school. Like, that's my career and I did university and all of that later. So I am all for trade school. Um, and so if that's what he wants to do, I fully support that. I just don't want to have all this money.

• 1:07:10Brian Preston?

  The 529.

• 1:07:11Speaker 06

  Here's a real good, here's a real good number, right? $35,000 is what can be used in a Roth IRA, right? That's what you could do. So if all you did is that, okay, of the 50, we want to target no more than $35,000 being in the 529, you at least have an escape hatch. Then it could be rolled into Roth IRA over the next number of years.

• 1:07:28Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:07:28Speaker 06

  So that gives you like eight.

• 1:07:29Speaker 05

  That's a good.

• 1:07:29Speaker 06

  There is no like right or wrong answer there, but you can play some like mental math to prevent yourself from thinking you're going to overfund it if he chooses not to go.

• 1:07:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:37Speaker 06

  Or does some other, some other type of educational thing.

• 1:07:40Speaker 05

  Okay. And I will say, my mom actually, she has gotten very, while she doesn't want to pay the penalty and taxes and all of that, she has gotten very creative. And I went back to school and got grad school and all of that in more recent years. And she paid for all of that. I'm super thankful, but she actually pulled, she was able to pull $10,000.

• 1:07:56Speaker 06

  Very generous.

• 1:07:57Speaker 05

  Out to put towards his student loan. So that $57,000. Was actually sixty seven thousand.

• 1:08:01Brian Preston?

  Most of the approved account. I mean, they love the, they keep changing.

• 1:08:05Speaker 05

  Our wedding gift was a ten thousand dollar contribution to, so she is trying, but she does not want to pay the penalties on it. So Mason and my niece and nephew and all of them will have some extra money for college too. Yeah, that's awesome. I just don't want to, obviously, we don't want to depend on that. Sure. It's, I don't want to depend on anyone else's money. If it comes, great. If not, we're set. Okay, so that's a good thirty five thousand about, give or take. That's a good number to have in a five twenty nine. And then maybe potentially the other fifteen, have it in a taxable brokerage account. Sure. Or depending on how far it is, more high yield savings.

• 1:08:37Speaker 06

  Right. All right, guys, are you ready for your homework?

• 1:08:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:08:40Speaker 06

  You guys are doing great. There's not a lot here. Priority number one, we think you ought to probably go and pay off the student loans. Defernment ends and, or interest starts in January. So let's go and get that knocked out. The other thing you guys should do is spend some real time figuring out what your number is. Like, okay, three million is a number. Realistically, what do we want to spend traveling? What are we going to do when we retire? How are we going to live life to at least give you something to work towards? There's nothing says that that has to stay your number, but at least allows you to know what you're working towards. Now, on the retirement side, figure out, is there another type of account I should be using, like a solo 401k? We love it. It gives, gives you more options than a SEP IRA. SEP IRAs are great and they're wonderful, but solo 401k just give you a few more options, which is wonderful. And then I said, decide where to save. Okay, for college, are we going to put

• 1:09:23Speaker 06

  it in the five twenty nine? Or are we going to leave it in a high yield account? Are we going to have it in cash? How can we do that? For the extra savings we're going to do, we're going to put in a taxable bridge account? Are we going to try to do it inside of some sort of retirement plan? Figure out how we're going to use those dollars and then you reverse engineer where to fund the dollars.

• 1:09:40Brian Preston?

  Shelby, thank you for coming on. Dustin, thank you. This has been an absolute pleasure. And I love that we actually got to show that you're going to reach your goals and become true financial mutants with all your discipline. Guys, thank you so much for tuning in. I'm your host, Brian Preston, Mr. Bo Hanson, Money Guy Team.

• 1:09:57Speaker 06

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

• 1:10:42Speaker 07

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games.

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  Filmed for IMAX.

• 1:10:50Speaker 02

  Make them remember you.

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, November 20th, rated PG-13. Hey, listen!

• 1:10:59Speaker 05

  Power up your play with Nintendo Switch 2 and experience Link's legendary adventure, now reborn in vibrant detail on our fastest and most powerful system yet. And harness the power of the Ocarina with the built-in microphone. Hmm hmm hmm, hmm hmm hmm. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive. Game and system sold separately. Game rated everyone 10 and up.