Planning for the Future When Tomorrow Isn’t Guaranteed | Making a Millionaire

Dom and Katie (both 28, engaged childhood friends) have built an incredible $443,000 net worth by saving a ton, but they're paralyzed by spending anxiety. Katie has cystic fibrosis, a condition where life expectancy has jumped from 30 to 65+ thanks to breakthrough medications. Whether you're an overachiever who's sacrificed present joy for future security, facing medical uncertainty that makes planning feel impossible, or struggling to balance aggressive wealth building with actually living your life, this episode will show you how to build financial independence without losing the present moments that matter most. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠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. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠DRINKAG1.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

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• 0:27Speaker 01

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• 0:56Speaker 02

  When I was born in 97, the life expectancy for people with cystic fibrosis was 30. We never talked about retirement because that future just didn't exist, frankly. That conversation has drastically changed. We've been saving so much, but I think part of that is because of all this uncertainty. There is a reality where I may not be able to work in the future. And we don't know if that's 60, or 35, or 40.

• 1:19Brian Preston?

  You're so strong on the discipline muscle. You need somebody whispering in your ear, "Tomorrow's not promised." I just want to make sure that when y'all look back in your 30s, your 40s, your 50s, and 60s, that you go, "Well done."

• 1:38Speaker 04

  So, from Columbus and live in Columbus now?

• 1:41Speaker 05

  We actually met when we were three years old. So, our parents met each other...

• 1:45Speaker 02

  Well, younger than that.

• 1:47Speaker 05

  Maybe, maybe even younger. But our parents met each other in church. Like, my mom was running the nursery, and she has a twin brother. And so, it turns out we lived in the same neighborhood. And so, growing up, I was at their house all the time, they're at my house all the time. I was like best friends with their twin brother.

• 2:02Speaker 04

  With the brother.

• 2:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, with their brother growing up.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  He has a sister who is not much younger than us, a couple of years. So, growing up, you know, I would hang out with her, he would hang out with my twin brother. So, we live five houses apart even today.

• 2:13Speaker 05

  Obviously, I had no interest in, you know, Katie at the time.

• 2:15Speaker 04

  Right, of course, it's your buddy's sister, right?

• 2:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, obviously. So, then, yeah, growing up, we went to, we ended up going to different high schools, went to different colleges, and then I ended up going to Ohio State for college, and then I stayed in Columbus, and then Katie.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  I went to University of Dayton for my undergrad, and then I came to Ohio State for graduate school.

• 2:32Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  It was right around the 2020, like, pandemic time. So, we, he had stayed, uh, cause it was a job offer that he had, and he took it, and he's like, "Times are weird, who knows what's gonna happen?" So, he stayed. About like a year into my graduate school, we came across each other on the dating apps, actually.

• 2:49Speaker 05

  We reconnected.

• 2:50Speaker 04

  Is that right? Oh my, had y'all stayed, like, in friendship with the, or like?

• 2:54Brian Preston?

  No. Were you still friends with her before the reunited?

• 2:58Speaker 05

  We hadn't, we hadn't talked.

• 3:00Brian Preston?

  Reunited? Did you, how about her brother? Did y'all?

• 3:03Speaker 05

  Uh, we had kinda gone out of contact and then.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  Basically since college, cause we just had it, we were never home, and it wasn't like, uh, yeah, it was just a little different, so.

• 3:11Speaker 04

  I kinda came in after the days of the dating app, but it's like, I guess it's like swipe, I don't know which way you swipe, were you like swipe?

• 3:16Brian Preston?

  Oh, I know them.

• 3:17Speaker 04

  Whoa, that's, that's my, that's.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Well, it's kinda funny.

• 3:20Speaker 05

  She messaged me.

• 3:21Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Of course you had to.

• 3:22Speaker 04

  He had to get that on air in front of the whole world, right there. I love it.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  But, but I didn't actually recognize him, cause I hadn't seen him since like high school. And so, we, and then I grew up calling him Dominic, but now he goes by Dom, he shortened it or whatever. So, I just didn't really put it together until, cause the dating apps don't show you the last name until you match. So, I had no idea. I was going off of location. I actually knew some people in his pictures. I was like, "I feel like I have to know him then," you know, like?

• 3:48Speaker 04

  That's wild.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  But, we've been dating ever since, and now we're engaged, so.

• 3:52Speaker 04

  Congratulations.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Thank you. So, we get married in three short months.

• 3:56Speaker 04

  You went to Ohio State, and you went there as, for the master's program. What do you guys, what'd you study? What do you guys do professionally?

• 4:03Speaker 02

  You wanna go?

• 4:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I studied computer science. I work at a healthcare IT company now in, in Columbus, and I do, I guess you'd call me a technical analyst. I do a lot of database work and help with workflows for different. Healthcare offices.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  My masters was in genetic counseling, so I'm a genetic counselor in Columbus.

• 4:19Speaker 04

  What's genetic counseling mean?

• 4:20Speaker 02

  That's the first question I get.

• 4:23Speaker 04

  I'm not gonna pretend like I know.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  It's a healthcare profession and basically I work with patients and families that have genetic disorders and help them understand the genetic conditions, kind of assess their risk for genetic conditions, especially if they're at-risk family members, help with like kind of orchestrate genetic testing, get that process going, explain results to them.

• 4:47Speaker 04

  Is it more science or psychology?

• 4:49Speaker 02

  It's actually a very mix of both. I mean, so that's the genetics piece is definitely the the science part, the education, understanding the different conditions and inheritance. And then the counseling is definitely the psychosocial piece of helping them cope and understand kind of what resources are available for them and how that looks and helping communication through families.

• 5:11Speaker 04

  Fascinating.

• 5:12Brian Preston?

  That is so much better than when I first heard that I was like Gattaca with Ethan Hawke.

• 5:19Brian Preston?

  Have you seen that sci-fi?

• 5:21Speaker 02

  I've not seen it since high school by all.

• 5:23Brian Preston?

  I know, that's how my brain works. You know, Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke.

• 5:28Speaker 04

  And how old are you guys?

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Twenty-eight.

• 5:30Speaker 05

  We're both twenty-eight.

• 5:30Speaker 04

  So here's what's wild. You were kind enough to share with us a net worth statement. You sent that over to us. And for 28-year-olds, when we look at this, right now, you have a total net worth of $443,000.

• 5:43Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 5:43Speaker 04

  If we just pause there for a moment, there are a lot of 28-year-olds out. There's a lot of 28-year-olds that are gonna watch this that are not in that spot. How'd you guys get here? Like, what was it that got you?

• 5:53Brian Preston?

  I wanna make one other observation. When I looked at this pre-show planning, I was like, wow, look at Dom. And then I was like, whoa, look at Katie. I mean, it was kind of you both, you know, so there's obviously a lot of good stuff going into this net worth statement.

• 6:06Speaker 05

  Well, I've always been a saver.

• 6:07Speaker 04

  Why?

• 6:08Speaker 05

  That's a good question. So, growing up, my parents, super frugal. I grew up with two parents, both of them were teachers. And one of them ended up being a stay-at-home mom, so I was kind of growing up with just one teacher that's a parent and... Didn't talk about money all that much growing up, but the one big things were, you know, what I saw growing up was being frugal and saving money. And they taught me, you know, some good habits like paying off credit cards and everything like that. But we didn't talk all that much about long-term planning and investing and all of that. And so just growing up, it was always difficult for me to spend money. And to be honest, it's still kind of difficult for me to spend money. It's something I'm working on, working on it. But, um, you know, not the worst problem to have. But if you're in that position, it's like, not everyone understands not being able to spend money because a lot of people

• 6:51Speaker 05

  spend money. I always kind of naturally was more of a saver. And in 2020, like Katie mentioned, I stayed in Columbus and I had a couple of months before starting my job. And at that point, I basically had no personal finance. Like, I didn't have very much knowledge at all as far as long-term investing, long-term planning. Just kind of knew what I grew up. Growing up, it's good to save money, but didn't know anything about investing, didn't know anything like that. Started watching YouTube videos. I found like, you know, Graham Stephan. I think I found you guys reacting to Graham Stephan. And so it's kind of how I found you guys, started getting all into the personal finance space and listening to all of that. But because I've always been more of a saver, since I started my first job, I think I was making 50,000 in my first job. And I'd set my retirement to save it. I think I set it to 20 or 25%. Let's go.

• 7:34Speaker 05

  And they had, they even like messaged me and they're like, are you sure you meant to say this? Is this right? Yeah. They messaged me. They're like, most people don't do this high.

• 7:44Speaker 05

  That speaks volumes right there. They were like, are you, or did you mean to do this? And I said, yeah. And I was living with roommates at the time, like expenses were super low. So I didn't have much else more to do with my money, especially in 2020. So that kind of just started the trend. And then really, I think the biggest thing has been just automating everything and making sure everything just gets invested and set aside without even thinking about it. I think, I think the automation has really been the biggest piece. And to be honest, I feel very fortunate to be where I'm at now. Like, I, I'm honestly, I think I'm very, it kind of shocks me with how far we've come. I've been tracking my net worth for the past five years.

• 8:19Speaker 04

  Nice.

• 8:20Speaker 05

  After graduating college, it was zero. So we started at zero pretty much five or six years ago. And so all of this has been since then. And it's, it's really kind of crazy to me just seeing all this. And after learning about compounding and that, you know, compound interest and compound growth, that really kind of set me off, I think.

• 8:36Speaker 04

  You just, you said something that's so great that I think so many young people miss. I graduated college and I had made it through college, learning how to live on the cheap, live on the cheap, live on the cheap. Well, once I got my first job and I got that $50,000 salary, I just lived the same way I lived in college. I had roommates and I was. And it's amazing if you can have that mindset and you can start out early on and you can just start socking that money away at 22, 23, 24, you do get to age 28, approaching 30, with almost half a million dollar net worth. It's, that's awesome. Good, good for you. Is your story similar, different?

• 9:08Speaker 02

  It's actually a little different. And I think that's what's so interesting because we've grown up knowing each other. Our families have always known each other, but my family background is, is very different. So my mom is a stay at home mom and she's, um, you know, that's absolutely a job in of itself. And she, I know we'll probably get to this, but, um, I have a cystic fibrosis, which is a chronic genetic condition. It's how I got interested into genetic counseling. But she was my primary caretaker and my dad was the individual that worked and was the primary income holder in the household. And he is in finance. He's worked at the same place his entire career. So he's really moved up the ladder and he's, um, learned a lot, obviously.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  And our household, we did talk about money. It was very transparent between us. I, I remember when we would do allowances, kids, my dad would make us budget. There'd be different jars. One would be charity and one would be college savings.

• 10:05Speaker 04

  Give, save, spend.

• 10:08Speaker 04

  Oh, me and your dad are buddies.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  Do whatever you want. And so, and then for each year of our life, it would go up a dollar. So like if you're 17, you'd get 17 to budget there. And literally since I was little, I can remember doing that every Sunday night in the kitchen. When we went to college, he was very open about credit card usage and how they might come after you and really want to try to kind of take advantage of those types of environments. And so kind of from the get go, even with a credit card, I was very cautious of what I spent it on and making sure it didn't feel like free money, obviously it's not. And, and that sort of thing, even growing up, when I would have conversations with my mom, and especially as I got older and I was transitioning from like pediatric care to more young adult care,

• 10:55Speaker 02

  there were a lot more conversations about healthcare expenses and costs and navigating insurance and all of that. It opened up the door to realize how expensive all of that is. Thankfully, I already had practices set in place where my spending wasn't, you know, kind of off the wall or crazy. But I think it fueled this idea of saving for future. I worked through college. It was primarily, I'm very fortunate that my parents, especially given my dad's financial background. And when they were first married, they kind of made this decision upfront that they were really going to help save for our future education. And so I'm very fortunate to not have student debt. That was a huge piece that put me ahead of the game and I don't take that for granted.

• 11:39Brian Preston?

  Sure. What was your savings rate? Cause we heard Dom came out right out of the chute 25%. What did you start out of the, when you got your first job?

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Basically, the place that I work, the benefits are fantastic.

• 11:51Brian Preston?

  I know you have a large pension, so probably some of that's forced saving. But give us both the force as well as what you chose.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  When I had started my first position, it was 2022. And so we had already been dating for two years. And so he was also a big help in helping me understand the finances because he had already gone through it for the past two years. In the beginning, I did focus primarily on kind of getting a bucket of just cash built up that I just didn't have with. You know, job working at a hair salon.

• 12:20Brian Preston?

  Sure.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  So, um, so I, uh, focused on the pension because it was just automatically taken out. And so my position, if you put 14% in, matches 14%.

• 12:30Brian Preston?

  Wow.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  So it's a big.

• 12:31Brian Preston?

  Wow.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, part of that is because I don't pay into social security with the type of benefits. So it is truly the, the pension piece from paycheck one, I maximized that. And actually, um, on the first paycheck, I thought it was a different, uh, account that I was eligible for, that they matched 14%. So I put 14% into the pension, 14% into something else.

• 12:52Brian Preston?

  Let's go.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  And then they matched 14%, but then I came home with like virtually no pension.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  I was like, what happened?

• 12:59Brian Preston?

  You had a different conversation with HR and be like, hey, I might have chosen too much.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Which is funny because I was telling him, I was like, uh, and then he goes, trust me, you'll like it later. The other account was a 403B. And so that had this like lump sum in the beginning. And now for a while I was putting like 200 a month and 200 when we got, uh, engaged. And we're trying to kind of cut back on some things for wedding planning.

• 13:23Brian Preston?

  On top of the 14% that you were already doing on the pension? That's great.

• 13:26Speaker 05

  That was like the main savings. And then with the, with the match of that, I, we didn't think we needed to save too much more for her because she was getting such a big match. And then she has access to a 403B, she has access to a 457. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of things that we probably want to talk about here. But yeah, based on the pension and the match, and then there's stuff we could talk about with the pension. Like there's a defined contribution versus defined benefit option that she has. And we think based on given our circumstances, we'll probably talk about more. It's probably best to be in the defined contribution plan, which is what we're in.

• 13:55Brian Preston?

  So right now, do you have to choose which plan you're in? Or is this down the road, it's a lump sum versus?

• 14:01Speaker 02

  Like I had to choose when I set it up. I actually don't know.

• 14:04Brian Preston?

  So they have multiple plans essentially on the pension side.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  But I chose like day one of signing.

• 14:09Speaker 05

  Basically, I think it said, if you don't choose anything, they'll put you in the defined benefit plan.

• 14:13Brian Preston?

  Right.

• 14:14Speaker 05

  Otherwise you can choose this defined contribution plan or like this hybrid option.

• 14:18Brian Preston?

  Yeah.

• 14:18Speaker 05

  Sort of a mix between them. And they said, if you don't choose the defined benefit plan, they give you like up to the first five years that you work there where you can like change to the defined benefit plan.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  And I am still within that five year piece. I've been working for three years now at the same position. And similar to Dom, just to like finish off that one piece, I guess, the, the main question, I. I automated everything. So obviously the pension piece was automated and was taken out before I ever even saw it. And then same with the 403B, I moved it down to like only 50 bucks a month or something like that, just because I was trying to put something in there. But when we got married, cut back a little bit. And then it was the same with the Roth IRA that I have. I've started with 200 in it and then moved that down to 50 as well. But that's continued through the wedding planning. And I'd like to bump that back up again, eventually. But then, and then the rest of it, like, it would come

• 15:07Speaker 02

  in as my deposit at the end of the month. And then that would pay off whatever daily expenses, credit card stuff that we had, mortgage, rent, whatever. And then I also was automating, after that, there was still some left over. And so then I would automate it into a high yield savings account. And that's where I built up some cash, too.

• 15:26Speaker 04

  As you guys sit here, you're 28 years old, your net worth is incredible. You guys have a lot of awesome stuff going on. Where's the friction? Like, obviously, you came, you came on to this show, like, hey, we have an issue or a thing, or we want some thoughts. But there's a lot of people that are going to be watching this, being like, oh, this, these folks are crushing it.

• 15:47Brian Preston?

  Yeah. What's the goals and struggles?

• 15:48Speaker 02

  The biggest piece in what made us apply is, like we said, we know we're fortunate where we're at. We know that we're saving a lot more than most people our age with cystic fibrosis, to give you both a little bit of background.

• 16:02Speaker 04

  I know nothing about cystic fibrosis. I'd love an education on that.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. So cystic fibrosis is a genetic condition. It primarily is known for affecting the lungs, but it affects multiple different body systems. So basically, the root cause of it is there's genetic mutations in a gene that is usually helpful in making sure that, like, mucus buildup doesn't get too thick. So people, when they get sick, there's a whole system in your body that basically helps thin that out. So you can get it out and, you know, decrease risk for infections, that sort of thing. The genetic defect in cystic fibrosis doesn't allow that to happen at all, or sometimes well enough, depending on the mutations that you have. It increases the risk for recurrent lung infections, progressive damage over Time and then impacts other bodily body systems like the digestive tract,

• 16:50Speaker 02

  reproductive tract, all that sort of thing. When I was born in 97, the life expectancy for people with cystic fibrosis was 30. So it's something that is has come a long way, partly in due to the science advancements and medication advancements that have happened. But primarily, the end stage is lung failure, needing a lung transplant. When I was first born, like I said, that was the life expectancy. But in the next 20 years that I was living, so I just to give you an insight of my day to day, I do two breathing treatments a day, one in the morning, one at night. They range anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, depending on the medications that I'm on. I take medication anytime that I eat to help digest my food.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  I have diabetes as kind of a result of some of the damage from CF. So I'm on all of that sort of medication as well. When I was growing up, it was about four different times throughout the year that I would have regular checkups with specialty doctors, which in cures across had frequent hospitalizations, pretty much on an annual basis when I was a kid growing up.

• 17:50Speaker 04

  So are you still hospitalized annually?

• 17:52Speaker 02

  No. So that's where this medical advancements kind of really came into play. So when I was in high school, there was a new class of medication that had come out called CFTR modulators, which essentially was a very specific drug that targeted the underlying protein defect in CF. So it's not a gene therapy. I still have the condition. It doesn't alter the genetic change, but it targets the defective protein to try and get it to maximize its ability to work essentially. Really, though, the benefits from that and like clinical trials and just once they establish one, it led to kind of a cascade effect of establishing a bunch of other ones and the impacts of it have been tremendous. So the life expectancy of a patient with CF born today

• 18:36Speaker 02

  is just about 65, 66 years old. So it's doubled the life expectancy from when I was born. And then me personally, I've been on this medication now. Thankfully, I was on the first class in high school, which really kind of stabilized me and that's when the hospitalizations stopped. And then in college, my junior year, I believe it was senior year, the kind of more recent class of these medications came out. And from there, I saw a 15% bump in my lung function. So I went from 60% up to 80% and I've stayed there for the past six, seven years. And so I've been very fortunate. It's allowed me to do a lot more in my life. But ultimately, to get to the, that's the background on CF that I think is helpful,

• 19:19Speaker 02

  but to get to the root of the question, the life expectancy for people born today is significantly greater. The question of what that means for people that had CF long-term before these medications came out, and also what the long-term effects of the medication could be, or just living longer with CF, what health risks that could bring, is completely unknown.

• 19:40Speaker 04

  So we don't have any sort of data or insight into that right now?

• 19:43Speaker 02

  The thing that was really kind of a 180 twist is when I was growing up from that pediatric into adult timeframe, we never talked about retirement. We never talked about saving for future medical expenses because that future just didn't exist, frankly. And now that is, that conversation is drastically changed. Thankfully, again, I had this foundation of spending and saving that allowed me to not start, you know, 10 miles back from the start line, but I don't know what the future holds. And so I think a lot of our questions come down to that, where we've been saving so much, but I think part of that is because of all this uncertainty. And I have fantastic health benefits right now, too, but there

• 20:25Speaker 02

  is a reality where I may not be able to work in the future. And we don't know if that's 60, or 35, or 40. We're hopeful it's not, obviously, and I don't feel right now like that's the case. But a lot of the data that has come to light with CF, that could be very real in the near fut-, or not near future, but in the future, is cancer risk is much higher for CF, particularly colon cancer and pancreatic cancer. We don't know what that would look like, and the, you know, knowing that we might be living longer makes that more of a reality, too, in of itself. So I think it's a combination of wanting to make sure that my, I don't, I've never wanted to be in a position where I financially am stressed because of my health. Like, I want to be able to maximize that. So that's

• 21:09Speaker 02

  a big piece for me. And adding somebody else into the picture, I don't ever want that to be a burden on somebody else. We still want all of the things that people getting married want. Like, we want a family. There's costs associated with that, not only from a, you know, with the genetic piece, if he is a carrier, so CF is a recessive condition. So you need both mom and dad to be carriers of a condition where the carriers themselves don't have the disease, but if they pass on the mutated gene, then that's where the risk of having CF comes from. So for me, since I only have The mutated genes, like I will be passing on that for him if he's a carrier, then we have a 50 50 shot each pregnancy of a kid having CF.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  And so we've decided that if he was a carrier, we would not want to conceive naturally. We think more about adoption or IVF or that sort of thing. And that his genetic status is currently unknown because we just have been focusing more on like the present day 20 year old.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  So we haven't crossed that bridge yet, but I think that's one portion of family planning that we're trying to realistically keep in mind that could be more expensive. But then in addition to that, taking away how we started a family. Once we have a family, what again, if I can't work and we don't have that, the means. And now we also have a family involved.

• 22:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, obviously there's a lot, there's a lot to take in there.

• 22:32Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, all of us have unknown unknowns. That's a reality of the life in which we live, but yours are very unique. That's a unique thing that not a lot of people have to navigate. I'd be curious to know between you guys, how the conversations got like, when you like, obviously you guys have put a ton of thought into this. As you're planning for it and thinking this, what, what plan have you guys already thought about putting into place?

• 22:53Speaker 05

  And that's partially why we're here. I think we have kind of the saving gene kind of down pretty well. I think we're good at saving, but as far as the plan, the plan right now is just put, pile up money and hope for the best and.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  And we don't know if that's the most advantageous and, and also like, we don't want to sacrifice things in the present day, just throwing all of that into a future that may not happen.

• 23:18Brian Preston?

  You just said a key part. First of all, thank you for sharing that. That's, that is, um, we all, nobody ever knows. That's the thing about being a human on the planet is that you can have everything in the world look like it's working for you, but we are all like ducks where our legs are under the surface, just going at it because we, it, it, no matter who I deal with, it seems like no matter how good the brochure looks on somebody's life, there's a lot going on with everybody and for you to share so transparently is awesome. But I do tell you, what's funny is the typical American says tomorrow is not promised and they spend like tomorrow is not promised and they go run up car debt, they run up credit card debt.

• 23:59Brian Preston?

  And then here you guys are, you're so strong on the discipline muscle. You need somebody whispering in your ear, tomorrow's not promised. Because y'all are so wound up tight on this side. I just want to make sure that when y'all look back in your 30s, your 40s, your 50s and 60s. That you go, well done. Cause I understand the desire that you don't want to be a burden. So you want to, you want to stack it in the background. But we gotta make sure y'all are also doing stuff that just is flourishing, blossoming memories. That will for, for decades and beyond will just carry you on and build into that happiness. I didn't even realize when I talked about the family and all the other social structures and the spiritual and other things that go into happiness.

• 24:43Brian Preston?

  The memory building is a big part of that as well.

• 24:45Speaker 05

  And as far as like how we live right now, we don't necessarily feel like we're holding ourselves back.

• 24:50Brian Preston?

  That was my next question.

• 24:51Speaker 05

  We don't, we don't necessarily feel that way, but also.

• 24:53Speaker 04

  Cause what's the, what's household income for you guys? Where are you at from an earnings standpoint?

• 24:56Speaker 05

  It's about 190,000.

• 24:58Speaker 04

  200 grand at 20, so y'all have got a big shovel too, right? So determining, even determining what we do with this is.

• 25:05Brian Preston?

  So what do y'all do for fun? If you say you're not leaving anything on the table, what do y'all do? So what's the hobbies, what's for fun? What do y'all go on vacation on?

• 25:12Speaker 05

  Well, we play volleyball at least a few times a week. We go to the gym three, four or five times a week.

• 25:17Speaker 04

  Let's go.

• 25:18Speaker 05

  We, we try to, try to travel two to three times a year, I would say in, in general.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  I don't think we get that. I think that is one area where we could be better or maximize that. I think part of it has been like, just because we are so busy in this time of life. But like, I could foresee in the future, after we got married, that sort of thing. Before we have a family, like that might be a time we want to optimize that more. We've had some great traveling experiences, but I, I think that there's a lot of other places we'd love to see.

• 25:47Speaker 05

  Being someone that saves so much, I don't necessarily know what it feels like to spend more.

• 25:51Brian Preston?

  Right.

• 25:51Speaker 05

  And I, I don't know what that could mean for me. And I feel like that's kind of exciting to think about, you know, having more to spend and doing more with the money. It's just maybe needing to think more about what are the things that I would be doing or we would be doing if we were spending more money.

• 26:06Brian Preston?

  Well, to give me some baseline, like typical vacation for you guys, if you say you're traveling three times a year, what are y'all doing?

• 26:12Speaker 05

  I'd say we, we probably fly somewhere once a. Once a year and then do road trips.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  I would love to have three vacations you're thinking of.

• 26:19Speaker 05

  We do like just smaller road trips.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  That's missing family.

• 26:24Speaker 05

  Typically, you know, we'll fly somewhere and then stay in Airbnb or hotel and then typically just have fun enjoying the city.

• 26:31Speaker 02

  Sounds like you're coming up where you're having trouble coming up with the three vacations.

• 26:35Speaker 04

  Like, tell me, tell me a recent trip that you went on that was like, oh, that was a super fun trip that we did.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  So we went to Ireland, which is where we got engaged.

• 26:41Speaker 04

  Okay, okay.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  And that was like, I mean, it was fantastic. We went for a week and it was his first time overseas and it was just a really neat experience. But that is definitely like, that is the vacation. When I think of vacations we've gone on, that is the one that I think of. Like, we've maybe done, we've gone to Colorado, we've done hiking, and then we've drove to the Smokies here in Tennessee and we've gone hiking. But that's the kind of what I would consider vacations in the past since 2020.

• 27:10Speaker 04

  Hold on, I heard, I heard three vacations.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  Right, yeah.

• 27:13Speaker 04

  Twenty, I'm not, I don't do public math a lot, but 2020, we're in 2026, that's five, three vacations a year. The math is not math in form here.

• 27:22Speaker 05

  We've done smaller little trips to Florida or?

• 27:25Speaker 02

  We have. And that, and that is like, I guess some of those wasn't family. My, my parents have a house down in Florida that they go to for the winter. So we have done that. I think I count that in my head as family, but it is still us making a trip. And we are there for like a week or whatever, but a lot of the expenses are covered because it's a house that's already, you know, we're staying with my family. So outside of activities and food, it's mostly paid for and it's more of like chilling on the beach and things that don't cost a lot.

• 27:55Speaker 04

  So in terms of things you're missing, it sounds like you would like, travel's the one that we're honing in on. You would like to travel more and have more experiences and do more things?

• 28:04Speaker 02

  I think we both would. I mean, I definitely think that he comes to me and he's like, hey, I'd really love to take a trip. And sometimes I just feel like I'm, my work's really busy at a certain point in the time. Like, getting our schedules to line up sometimes can be challenging for that, like everybody else. But yeah, I think travel. Is a piece that I would love. We did just recently purchase a home and so like we, you know, I would like to make that a home is probably the simplest way to put it.

• 28:30Speaker 04

  How recently was this purchase?

• 28:32Speaker 05

  Within the last year.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Last January.

• 28:34Speaker 04

  How much of a home did you buy?

• 28:36Speaker 02

  363.

• 28:37Speaker 04

  363 and then what's the mortgage on that? Do we have that on the net worth statement?

• 28:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:40Speaker 04

  There we go.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  So this is a little bit odd.

• 28:43Speaker 04

  There's two mortgages. I see an A and a B.

• 28:45Brian Preston?

  There's one that somehow the bank is not very good at banking.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  So this is actually a little interesting. So when we first were starting the home searching process, the bank that our mortgage is through offered a first time home buyers plan, essentially, as you could call it, but it splits it into two mortgages where they provided $20,000 at 0% interest to help with down payment costs.

• 29:07Speaker 04

  The bankers just love you? Or is this like a common thing?

• 29:10Speaker 02

  So it was income based and at the time we qualified for that or I did at least. So I took out the loan and then the other portion of the mortgage is at the typical percentage, which was the 7%. So blended, it's a little bit lower.

• 29:28Speaker 04

  When does the mortgage B have to be paid off?

• 29:30Speaker 05

  It's 30. It's a 30 year.

• 29:31Speaker 04

  It's a 30?

• 29:32Brian Preston?

  So we just did a live stream and about affordability by state and somebody in the comments had listed they were a mortgage broker and they would listed that a lot of states will have these subsidized programs for first time buyers. Probably some content ideas there that we could, we could cover.

• 29:51Speaker 04

  Fascinating. So we bought this home. You got in the home and you're someone who want to turn it, we want to turn it into a home. What does that mean? Does it mean like furnishing renovations? What, what's turning into a home mean? Dom, what's that mean for you?

• 30:02Speaker 02

  I think I have a different answer.

• 30:03Speaker 05

  That's a good question. I can live there. There's a couch, you know, comfortable for us.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  I can, yeah. So I mean, I think

• 30:11Speaker 04

  She said, I'll take this one.

• 30:13Speaker 02

  And I don't necessarily think I've ever voiced it to him either, but I think just, you know, like, we walked into a house that a whole other family had lived in. Like, I would love to just be like, one day, wake up and be like, you know what, this room, I don't like this color anymore. I want to be able to like, do something where I make this guest room feel like it's our own. And, or, you know, right now, I am using one of the bedrooms as an office, but I would love for that to be a nursery at some point, and then a child room. And, and a lot of the furniture that we do have is furniture that we've had for years. And like, it's, it's fine, and it works. But like, I think realistically, like, I wouldn't want our spending habits to like, hold us back from wanting to change something, or make it feel like it's more our own space.

• 30:55Speaker 04

  So you bought this house roughly a year ago now. Why have you not done some of those things up to this point?

• 31:00Speaker 02

  I think it's more time. I mean, part of it's money, too, because we've been saving for other things, like the wedding, and I think also just the conversations that we've had. But I think a big part of it's time as well.

• 31:10Speaker 04

  A lot of the issues, you're like, hey, we want to travel more. Wow, we just can't get our schedules aligned. Or, we really want to work on the house, but I just don't have the time to... You're not describing a lot of money problems as much as you are time issues.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  I do think that one of the things, and you could probably comment on this, because we, once a year at least, have sat down and like, looked at our finances and everything. But part of what triggers that is, I start getting nervous we're spending too much. And so like, if I see, and it's arbitrary, I don't have a number in mind, for example. But like, if I start seeing my, my high-yield savings dip below a certain point, I'm like, oh, I can't spend anymore. That seems like this is becoming too much. So I think even if we had the time, all of the sudden, spending $5,000 on a trip, and doing that consistently throughout the years, I think mentally would actually be a struggle.

• 32:04Brian Preston?

  Well, what's the sinking funds for? Because that's typically for, so for people who are regimented and disciplined, you create the sinking fund so that it frees you to go spend the money without the regrets and other things. So what's, I see on the networks, there's a sinking fund.

• 32:18Speaker 05

  We kind of... Label that because of the wedding, that's going to be funds that are going towards the wedding.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  Before this, we added up everything that's due for the rest of the vendors and added a couple like thousand dollars for miscellaneous, that sort of thing. But the rest of that, we've always just considered savings, emergency fund, don't touch. So we haven't, like, outside of those sinking funds, we don't label any of that as that. So I think that's a big, like, what you're mentioning, we've never had that mindset.

• 32:45Speaker 04

  Okay. Do you guys budget?

• 32:47Speaker 05

  I think we do, I think you referred to as like a cash management plan.

• 32:50Speaker 04

  Tell me more about that.

• 32:51Speaker 05

  Where we have, we have all of our costs that we know we're going to have every month. We, I guess we refer to them as fixed costs, where every month, we know this is how much we're going to spend. This is how much is going into our Roth, this is how much is going in, you know, 401K and everything. And then this is how much for long-term savings. And then whatever's left over is kind of just this pile of money that we say we can kind of do.

• 33:13Brian Preston?

  So you've automated the process as your cash manager, where the force savings.

• 33:17Speaker 05

  A majority is automated, everything's forcibly saved. And then we don't have like, you know, an every dollar where every, everything we have goes into a certain bucket. But we just kind of have this miscellaneous bucket of whatever we want to do.

• 33:29Brian Preston?

  Does it grow every month? I mean, do y'all find that you, you have money left over?

• 33:33Speaker 02

  I think it grows because we use it.

• 33:34Speaker 05

  I think we probably should track that more, but we're probably not spending as much as we could.

• 33:40Speaker 04

  Because, because one of the things that people will budget, and generally when you budget is because you don't have enough resources to be able to fund the expenses you have. And then you kind of graduated this cash management plan. And what a cash management plan is supposed to do is it's supposed to free you up and remove the guilt from spending. Because you already said, hey, with our cash management plan, we've already got the money going to the pension, we've already got the money going to the Roth, we're already doing the savings. And so if I know that my money is going where it's supposed to be going, in the pockets that it's supposed to be going in, I can spend freely. So I'm a little curious about the psychology behind, oh, when I see my high-yield savings account get down, I start to worry we're spending too much. That's never, you never like cut back your savings, right?

• 34:20Speaker 02

  I know. Yeah. I don't know. I think a big part of it is I have, I have this ability in my brain to just really catastrophize. And so like, I am always worried the shoe is going to drop on the other side. And so for me, it's always kind of this feeling of like, well, you could have, never have too much savings. And, you know, I, I see the Retirement savings and all of that, but I also have this other piece of my mind. I'm like, well, you don't want to take that. You can't take that out to some degree in certain areas. And so like, I also feel like sometimes I think about the actual cash that's available. And I always question, is it enough?

• 34:57Brian Preston?

  I thought a different thing when I heard you say you looked at your high yield. Do y'all, how are y'all running your finances? Are y'all joint on that? Or, and I know y'all, we got a marriage coming up and that's going to kind of legally tie it all in. But are y'all doing separate savings for emergency funds? How are y'all handling that?

• 35:11Speaker 05

  Yeah. So right now our, our accounts are separated. Uh, we're planning to combine everything. Once we do get married.

• 35:16Brian Preston?

  Sure.

• 35:16Speaker 05

  And to be honest, right now we, we don't, we don't Venmo for anything like, we don't like send each other money for things at this point. We're kind of, we're going to just treat things like they're both of ours.

• 35:26Brian Preston?

  With it all separated, like who pays the mortgage? Who pays? How do y'all, how do y'all deal with that stuff?

• 35:30Speaker 02

  Well, he would do Venmo me for the mortgage. So I,

• 35:33Speaker 04

  I like how you said, we don't Venmo each other. And then the very first thing he said, no, no, you Venmo me for that.

• 35:38Speaker 05

  For the small, for the small expenses and everything.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:40Speaker 05

  Out of principle, I've Venmo for the mortgage. But once we, uh, once we are married, it'll,

• 35:45Speaker 04

  Then I'll be the same pot.

• 35:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  With, with the loan and everything in my name, I've kept all of that tied into one thing. So I, I pay the mortgage, but he does send over the money. And then same with like utilities. I'll, I'll have that automated out. And then, um, I don't ask him for money on that. But that's because on the weekends, basically any events, things that we do dinners, that sort of thing. He's just paying with his card.

• 36:04Brian Preston?

  Sure.

• 36:05Speaker 02

  So, but I think a big part of that is, um, like, I think the available cash that I have in, I say I, but you know, in, in the account that's under my name, like the available cash I have is basically where I'm also paying out all the wedding stuff. And again, he'll Venmo me for, but like, I think the account numbers I see, it's like maybe 25,000 in the ally, knowing that I'm going to have 16,000 going to wedding at some point. And there's like this block in my brain where I don't think of our finances jointly yet. So it's like, I, even though I know we are, I don't see his finances growing necessarily because I don't go into his account. So we don't have a joint account or that sort of thing. So I think it's a little bit of a mental block, but.

• 36:48Speaker 04

  Outside of the wedding, has there been a time in your life where you felt a similar anxiety to watching the money fly out? Or perhaps is this a unique moment in time where there's this big event, these big expenses that's creating a heightened sense of anxiety that's maybe not normalized?

• 37:06Speaker 02

  I don't think, I think it is kind of now, but I, I think the other part of it is I, in this time of life where we are getting married, there's obviously these high expenses now, but I think it has me thinking even more futuristic because we're starting this new life together. So I think of like, I, I have been thinking of, of family way more now than I ever did 10 years ago, or something like that, or even three years ago.

• 37:32Speaker 04

  Family meaning like your, like the?

• 37:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, like us having kids.

• 37:35Speaker 04

  Family, children.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  I think that I have this other piece in my brain where I'm like, okay, well, the wedding's gonna go away at some point, right? And we're gonna recoup that price, or we'll save on that. But then we'll have a kid. And then what if we have another kid? And, you know, I start kind of going down this snowball there.

• 37:52Speaker 00

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• 38:47Speaker 04

  Let me ask you, because there's some work that we're gonna want to do, right? We're gonna want to do some work. Walk us through currently how you're saving and investing. You've got this, uh, this systematic plan, we've automated everything. Walk us through the numbers. The one I've got right now is I know we got 14% going into your pension. Where else do we have money going?

• 39:06Speaker 05

  Yeah. So for my 401k, I, I just set it to 25%. That's not enough to max it out with my current income. Um, and then I get a 3% match, plus it's, then it's like, it's 3% match and 50% match on the next 2%. So essentially a 4% match on the, the 401k contribution. I max out a Roth IRA every year. I've done that since 2020. I max out an HSA. Did want to ask about this, so. Because Katie and I are on different, so we're on different health insurances. We're both on individual plans. Prior to us getting married, she was putting, so we're not married yet, but she was putting money in an FSA. I was putting money in an HSA. She was spending out of the FSA.

• 39:47Speaker 05

  As far as I can tell, in the year that you get married, you're not allowed to both put money in an HSA and an FSA. Maybe can be corrected if I'm wrong, but because we're both on individual plans, I'm still only able to contribute the individual amount. So I'm maxing out the, I'm maxing out the HSA, but as far as I can tell, Katie is no longer allowed to contribute to the FSA. And so, anyway, I'm contributing like the 4,000, 4,000, whatever the.

• 40:15Brian Preston?

  Typically, you don't mix FSAs in health savings accounts, except for like the dependent care expenses, you know, for childcare and other things like that. But that is true. And that's what, that's why it allows you then to go from an individual plan to the family HSA contribution, once, once you clear, clear up some of that stuff.

• 40:32Speaker 05

  Okay. Cause yeah, how we are, how we are right now, Katie should stay on her health insurance because it's good health insurance. And so it, and my insurance is pretty cheap through my employer. So I'm staying on my individual plan.

• 40:43Brian Preston?

  And that might still be the case. I mean, we love health, I mean, but, and, but we can also find out. I mean, if they stay on their individual plans, there's no issue with.

• 40:52Speaker 04

  Well, if they're both, if they're both going to HSAs, but if you're doing the FSA instead of the HSA, then that's, that's totally fine. You just can't contribute in the same place, right? If you cannot be a FSA contributor and HSA contributor.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  So if we're separate though.

• 41:05Brian Preston?

  But that's what I'm asking.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  I could still.

• 41:07Speaker 04

  Let us, we'll do a little bit of, we'll do a little bit of research on that.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Cause I think the other part with this that we've talked about is like, if he's on an individual plan and we can't do both an FSA and HSA, he can only contribute in the individual amount to the HSA. I basically, on an annual basis, am spending anywhere from three to four plus grand on health insurance, even with the benefits that I have to date. And so like what's currently in his HSA, for example, I'd spend that in two years. And, um, and so like he's talked about, well, sometimes you can. Spend the cost now and reimburse yourself later. But I don't know if that plan makes sense for us when we know that it's basically reoccurring.

• 41:48Speaker 04

  Do you have an HSA available or just the FSA?

• 41:50Brian Preston?

  Well, and also realize, one of the caveats, we love health savings accounts. Triple tax advantage, we talk about that all the time on the show. But we always do put a little asterisk next to it and say, you still might not be able to do the HSA if you have an employer that's offering you Cadillac-type benefits. So, I mean, in everything y'all have shared so far, y'all are loaded up with benefits at your employer, from your employer. So, I applaud you for the excitement for the health savings account, but it's a mathematical exercise. Because I have a feeling you're getting lots of benefits. Even though you're paying $3,000 a year out of pocket, I bet your employer plan is pretty, pretty good.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 42:34Brian Preston?

  Based upon everything you've shared so far.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  I think that's the other thing, too, that we've talked about is like staying on separate insurances. Because right now, like, I know what I use. I know that I hit my deductible. I know that the insurance that kicks in after that is great. He's on a low-premium plan, high deductible, because he never needs it, kind of thing, or we, you know, never hope.

• 42:52Speaker 04

  What about on your side?

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Outside of the 14% into the pension, I currently am just doing like $50 into the 403B and $50 into the Roth on a monthly basis. The FSA previously had been taken, like, I have to elect at the beginning of each year, right? And then take that out. So, this upcoming year, because we're getting married, I chose not to elect. So, that, in 2026, I don't have anything from that. So, so the rest of that, for me, goes into savings.

• 43:19Brian Preston?

  We'll get you clarification on that, too, so you can know going forward.

• 43:22Speaker 04

  I didn't want the government coming after us.

• 43:24Brian Preston?

  We'll get you some clarification on that.

• 43:26Speaker 04

  So, do you know the dollar figure y'all save a year, or roughly?

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Pretty much all of this, if you took what our annual, or our monthly take-home is and subtract, like, that's genuinely what's going into savings.

• 43:40Speaker 04

  So, what's the monthly take-home for you guys right now? Well, it's minus taxes.

• 43:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 43:44Speaker 04

  Monthly take-home right now is around $9,000. Okay. So, about $9,000 a month coming in. We got about $6,300 a month going out in expenses. That means that the net difference between that's going to be your savings.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:58Speaker 04

  On a monthly basis. But you got to add in the 401K and that kind of stuff. So, we can, we can do some math on that. What I'm guessing here is savings rate's going to be?

• 44:07Brian Preston?

  Oh.

• 44:08Speaker 04

  Well beyond.

• 44:09Brian Preston?

  Dom's already thirty plus percent.

• 44:10Speaker 04

  Well beyond twenty five percent for the household.

• 44:12Brian Preston?

  If you could count your employer's contribution. I mean, I don't think the savings is the issue for you guys whatsoever.

• 44:19Speaker 04

  It's really gonna be interesting, because I'll go ahead and spoil it for a little bit. One of the exercises we're gonna work through is kind of walking through the financial order of operations to see where you guys are and are you filling out the right buckets? And you guys are likely gonna be in those later stages. You're gonna be in like the seven, eights and nines where one of the things we want you to do is if you're following the financial order of operations, you're putting the money in the buckets where they should be going, you don't have to have some of this anxiety around, because if you just do that at twenty eight, one of the beautiful things that you've done is you've given yourselves a huge head start. If we just looked at your wealth multiplier for a twenty eight year old, took your three hundred and fifty thousand dollar portfolio, applied the wealth multiplier to it, you're likely already well on your way to financial independence, even without saving anymore.

• 45:03Speaker 04

  So then the question becomes, how do we bridge the gap between that future unknown unknown and the things we want to accomplish today? Because you said you're always waiting for the shoe to drop. I'm always waiting for the next thing. What's gonna happen? What's gonna happen? What I were is I don't want you to have that remorse when you look back and say, man, I wish we would have gone on that trip. I wish we would have painted the room. I wish we would have. Because for all intents and purposes, it looks like you guys are gonna have the ability to do that stuff, but you're gonna have to mentally get to the place where you're okay doing it.

• 45:32Brian Preston?

  Well, Katie, I can already tell you're kind of the field general on a lot of the finances right now with the paying the bills and other stuff, but you're also the one carrying this financial anxiety for, because you're overthinking, worried about, because you know, anxiety and you deal with it, dealing, doing the genetics, counseling and all the other things. You do understand fears and all the other things. And what I would encourage you, because we have the word sinking fund on there, but it doesn't sound like y'all are using it the way it's actually meant. Because what that is supposed to do is what we alluded to earlier. We could like, because you've already talked about family planning. There's gonna, I don't know if it's gonna be in vitro or if it's going to be adoption. There's gonna be a cost, but we could go ahead and, and name a budget on that

• 46:14Brian Preston?

  and, and put a sinking fund. You could go ahead and set up a plan to fund it. And now that anxiety or that fear for the future. Just it it it should be addressed and it should free you. Cause that's the thing. I hate seeing somebody who's got so much potential and you're already carrying so much weight from the health struggles that if we can create systems that will kind of check the box on that stuff. Now you no longer it's automated and automatic for for the for the family and you guys are gonna be in a great place. Um, I had to modify.

• 46:44Speaker 04

  I don't know why.

• 46:45Brian Preston?

  Cause I always say automatic for the people. Uh, cause but it is one of those things where I just, I hate to see you struggle on something that we have a system that can fix that. Um, if you just use sinking funds for what they're supposed to do.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  I think a big part of a lot of my anxiety comes from, I've just never been able to conceptualize, like because the uncertainty is such a gray box. I've never been able to really conceptualize like that space. And then also I I've learned a lot from him and just being an adult and functioning over the past like six years, but I don't have the background to understand all of the nuances and intricacies of of finance. And so like, I always can get myself to this point where I'm like, no, you're doing okay. You can, you can spend this, you can do that. And then there's a voice in the back of my head that's like, but wait, you you don't know. And so like, having somebody else like actually seeing it, looking at it, that has the, the knowledge and the background and all of that.

• 47:38Speaker 02

  And then being like, here are some bucket examples. I'll feel so much more at ease to like, follow that, I guess.

• 47:45Brian Preston?

  I'm gonna go ahead and save you all a lot of, uh, you have achievers brain, which I I deal with this constantly with clients. I deal with it with myself. I'm constantly, Bo knows. I mean, uh, cause I talk about, I walk around looking for things out of place so that I can go back and fix them. You know, so if I, if my wife misplaces her phone or keys, I typically know where it is because I'm always running a mental inventory. That's great for being a financial planner and creating success, but it does create, and this, I see this with all achievers and I picked on Bo about this too, is because he was so focused on making sure he did everything for while he was in his twenties. He wasn't thinking about the present to to to make, live your best life now.

• 48:29Brian Preston?

  This doesn't get better. It actually accelerates because you're rewarded. This is the problem with an achievers brain is that you were rewarded for that hypervigilance. But at some point, your brain says, whoa, I can only do so much. And the anxiety starts backing up and it and it manifests in some weird places. You know, it could be sleep, it could be other things. We've got to go ahead and create systems now that acknowledge, hey, brain, I see what you're doing. Thank you for being awesome and creating this success and giving my special place. But let's also make sure we're doing today well so that I can enjoy, because we've already alluded to, y'all's big problem is not money, it's time. And I think that's all comes back to are y'all being present in the moment?

• 49:13Brian Preston?

  To make sure you're not just all doing everything for tomorrow and making sure everything's the box checked. Let's make sure that not only for mental health, but also just for your long-term legacy of memories. Y'all can do this in a way that kind of frees your brain not to have that anxiety.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  When I think a little bit of that uncertainty in the future, like where my thought process goes is like, paying for healthcare that I would need, or like making sure that I'm not in a position where I can't afford a treatment that I need, or a doctor's visit that I need, or that sort of thing. But I think on the flip side for you, if I can't work and we're down to one income, like you'd be the one working. And if we had kids and you know, you were the one working, like I also kind of am wondering on that side of your brain, like, is there anything, like honestly, that does, from your standpoint, makes you concerned about the future? That you would want more answers on, more than just what I'm asking of like,

• 50:11Brian Preston?

  That's a great question.

• 50:12Speaker 02

  Kind of arbitrary.

• 50:13Brian Preston?

  That is a great question.

• 50:14Speaker 05

  I'm a very optimistic person. It's hard for me to think negatively, to be honest. You know, we hope that those things don't happen, but if they do, I would love to see like what those numbers would look like if I found the only one working and she's no longer working. How does that look? I feel a little bit better about it because we already have this kind of big cushion built up. I feel like that gives us more flexibility. A part of the reason I really like saving is that it means, to me, it means more flexibility and potential to have independence and do what I want, when I want. We haven't really talked about this, but I would love to be financially independent at a bit of a younger age, maybe 50, 55, something like that. I don't know what that would look like as far as with our current numbers and spending. But financial independence, again, is something that I was like, those people have it,

• 50:59Speaker 05

  but like, I would, like, how would I ever get there? And so it's like, the fact that now it's like, seemingly something that is achievable, it's hard for me to understand, like, what does that mean as far as?

• 51:09Brian Preston?

  So 50 or 55, also, go with me on this, what is y'all's income breakout? Who makes what?

• 51:15Speaker 05

  We make about the same. It's around...

• 51:17Speaker 02

  I'm right around 95, like 95, 96. And then, yeah, the rest would be him, but you currently do like a little bit of on-call work, which is...

• 51:27Speaker 05

  It evens out, it's about the same, right?

• 51:29Brian Preston?

  And what career trajectory is, I mean, is it conceivable you'll make 200,000 at some point in the future, or you kind of capped out? What does y'all's careers look like?

• 51:38Speaker 05

  I see it continuing to go up. 200,000 would probably be far in the future. I could see, you know, going up 3%, 4%, 5% a year.

• 51:46Brian Preston?

  And y'all were both, I think in the stories, y'all giving us background, both of you had stay-at-home mothers, correct? What is y'all's plan when you come to family planning?

• 51:55Speaker 02

  I think realistically, so I work for an academic medical center right now, so it's a little bit different in terms of like, how you progress in your career. It's promotion tracks, essentially. So, big pay raises come with that sort of promotion from an assistant to associate professor and so on. There's like an annual bump each year for combating inflation and that sort of thing. But I think realistically, I know that if we had kids or my health at some point, like, I could see that one of us would have to be part-time. That could potentially make more sense for me, but we don't, we don't really know. Yeah, and I think the piece that you've brought up about like, financial independence too, like, to be clear and have it on the record, like, he's never made me feel like

• 52:38Speaker 02

  a burden that I ever was now or would be in the future, and he is a very optimistic person. But like, I've also seen how hard he's worked and how much he's like, learned and taught himself, and there's this piece of like, you build up all this, you've built all of this from... You doing the work, I don't want to be the one to drain that. Thinking about this where there's a way, if there's a way to optimize everything that we're doing, and maybe that's why I think about saving so much that like, we could be financially independent by 50 or 55, even if that means I haven't been working for the past 10 years. But not having that all fall on him.

• 53:16Brian Preston?

  I don't, I think you're doing enough worrying about that. He's not, nobody, nobody in this house is feeling like y'all aren't all doing great work on that aspect. I really do feel that.

• 53:25Speaker 05

  Just as another question, given Katie's condition, she may be eligible for an ABLE account, just given the amount of health things that she has to worry about and future health conditions. I believe she may be eligible for that, so potentially another savings vehicle.

• 53:38Brian Preston?

  The two triggers, you know, and it's even gotten better, starting as of January of 2026, is that you either have to be receiving, you know, benefits from like SSI, social security, for disability, or just a note from a doctor saying that, you know, you have a disability or something that impedes you. There's actually a great, if you need details, and I can, I can talk a little bit more about it, but if you go to, I believe it's ABLE NRC dot O R G. It's National Resource Center, I believe. I'm just making sure I get it right. But

• 54:17Brian Preston?

  it definitely ABLE NRC dot O R G. Great resources on what, and they even have some examples of what a statement from the doctor looks like. But yeah, as long as you get that in place before age 46. It used to be 26, but they've expanded the legislation to where it's now 46. And for those who don't know out in the audience, an ABLE account is under the same code section as 529 that is similar to like college savings plans. And as long as you're using it for qualified expenses, and it's pretty broad with ABLE. It can even be some lifestyle stuff and other things. It's, the growth of these accounts is completely tax-free. The first hundred thousand dollars doesn't count against your social security.

• 55:01Brian Preston?

  And then you even have up to the state limits, and each state's a little different. You even qualify for some other benefits. So it's a really cool thing that the government has put in place to help people pay for expenses when you have.

• 55:15Brian Preston?

  Unique struggles, you know, I have a daughter who's on the autism spectrum and we use ABLE accounts, so they are a very powerful tool in the financial planning.

• 55:25Speaker 04

  I'm excited to paint a picture for you guys. I think we're going to paint a pretty exciting picture that kind of walks you through what the future, even the unknown future, could look like. Man, Brad, what an awesome conversation with Dom and Katie.

• 55:36Brian Preston?

  What really hit me is that people are going to see, and this is what the audience is going to take away, here's a young couple.

• 55:42Speaker 04

  Crushing it.

• 55:43Brian Preston?

  I mean, they've already built a tremendous net worth, they're saving a lot, and I think that that's, I hope the audience is kind, because they're going to look at that and be like, wow, they got everything working for them.

• 55:54Speaker 04

  They got no problems at all.

• 55:55Brian Preston?

  And then, we're going to find out, because I think this is a lesson about being a human, is that no matter what the book looks like, we all find out that there's still struggle. Nobody ever knows what's going on behind the scenes, and Katie was very honest and very vulnerable with us, that yeah, they have all this great stuff going on with their income, their career, their net worth, but then yet, she has some health struggles that might, in a lot of ways, need to draw attention to how they're using these assets in the long term.

• 56:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, they felt like they were doing all these things right, but didn't feel like they had the freedom to enjoy the here and now, and given the unique constraints, the here and now is pretty important for them. So we said, hey, what if, what if we kind of peel back the layers and say, okay, what are you guys doing presently? Let's kind of uncover, let's triage your current situation. We look at their current financial order of operations, as expected, they're absolutely killing it. They're saving 14.5% into Dom's 401K, another 14% into Katie's pension between her contribution to Match. They're putting money in Dom's Roth, they're putting money in Katie's Roth, they're putting money in Dom's HSA, and they're even putting a little bit into her 403B. And when you add up all

• 57:02Speaker 04

  these different sources, if you asked them what their savings rate would be, I think they would say something along the lines of, oh, we're saving about 35%, and that would be accurate based on this, but that's only telling part of the story.

• 57:15Brian Preston?

  Yeah, because there's actually like another $2,700 a month is just sitting out there. So the savings rate is likely over 50% at this point.

• 57:23Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 57:24Brian Preston?

  And, and here's what I worry about. This is typical achievers slash financial mutants that are quickly getting into financial miser spaces. That they're being so dedicated, so responsible that they might be missing out on today. And here's why, because of Katie's condition and health struggles, that might be something that needs to be even a deeper focus right now. We need to work on them kind of taking that into account so that they don't miss something and have regrets later.

• 57:51Speaker 04

  And even in terms of the good financial decisions that they're making, it seems like it's kind of all over the place. There's not like a lot of rhyme or reason into what they're doing or how they're doing. It's just, okay, what if we were to rework their financial order of operations? What if we were to rethink through, okay, when we think about the next dollar they're deploying, what would be the best use of that? And so we reconstructed, relooked at what we would recommend, and this is how we think they should prioritize. We want Dom putting in enough to get his full 401k match. So he puts in 5% and then he gets a 4% match. We'll have 9% of his pay going into his 401k. We're not going to touch or affect any of Katie's pension. We're still going to have the 14% going in there.

• 58:34Speaker 04

  And we want both of them to max out their Roth IRA. So $625 each for each of them. And then we want Dom putting money into the HSA, maxing that out at $367. So if we can do that, we are now well into step seven. We are at a savings rate of 28.6%, even backing down some of their savings.

• 58:56Brian Preston?

  That's what's wild to me is just doing these basic steps gets them to 25%. And now they're going to be able to do some other things, which includes even some realignment on what their savings should be. Cause we had a conversation about ABLE accounts.

• 59:08Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 59:08Brian Preston?

  And because we know that there's some medical expenses and other things, they should, they should take advantage of maybe there's some tax preferred or tax favored ways that they can fund it. An ABLE account definitely makes sense, and I love that we actually created a way for them to have a contribution of around $1,667 a month. To a brand new Able account.

• 59:26Speaker 04

  And I think one of the things that's super interesting is that they were, they were saying, you know, we're not so concerned about the future and about retirement and financial independence. They were more concerned about some of the, I'm going to call it intermediate term goals or unknown unknowns they might have, whether that be how they're going to start a family and what that might look like. Maybe it's travel and creating experiences, memories, or maybe it's even some unknown unknown related to her condition. Like, I don't know what the healthcare costs are going to be and what that's going to look like. And so we said, rather than have that sitting out there, you guys have plenty high enough income, plenty of margin that you could even create some sinking funds to be able to satisfy those goals. We said, okay, what's it look like if you guys were just to compartmentalize and think through,

• 1:00:11Speaker 04

  all right, I want to put $500 a month into each one of these goals. I'm just going to think about it as a sinking fund, whether it be for future family planning, whether it be for medical concerns, or whether it be for travel and experiences. Even just them doing that creates a ton of opportunities down the line. If they were to do that and begin to deploy that by age 35, they'd have almost $60,000 in each one of those buckets.

• 1:00:35Brian Preston?

  Right.

• 1:00:35Speaker 04

  By age 45, they'd have almost a quarter of a million dollars in each one of those buckets. So that way, if they decide to go the family planning route, or if there's some medical concerns, they don't have to worry about sacrificing their future financial wellbeing, because they know that they've allocated dollars for that. And if they end up not using those dollars for whatever those purposes may be, then they just get to become part of the true financial independence plan.

• 1:01:00Brian Preston?

  Well, I thought, I thought it was good if you, if you do these sinking funds. It felt like a lot of their stresses was being able to free them to enjoy more of today and not think so much of the future. And I love that if we give them these sinking funds, it's going to go ahead and let them check the box on the kids, the future kids, on the potential healthcare and the sidebars that that creates and the, and the things it takes away from the current life. And then just having an additional $500 a month for whatever comes your way, like it just enjoying your life, because that's the difference between a savings account and a sinking fund is that the goal is We want you to spend this money, actually use it. So I hope it doesn't get to the point where they're 45 and these things are a quarter of a million dollars.

• 1:01:43Brian Preston?

  I'm hoping that this actually goes to free them to enjoy their present life. While they have the army of dollars working in the background, building something pretty magical as well.

• 1:01:53Speaker 04

  And I love what you said there is the goal of the sinking fund is to be used, is to be spent. So we said, okay, now let's run some projections. Let's remove those sinking funds completely from the equation. Pretend that they're not there. And now we've backed down their savings rate from nearly 50% down to about 28%. How does that actually play out for them? What does the future look like? Well, what we found is even in a reduced savings rate, because they've done so much hard work, building up to a portfolio of $350,000 today. If they just save that 28.6% or a little over $4,500 a month. They are well on their way for having a portfolio of 6.5 million by the time that they're 50.

• 1:02:36Speaker 04

  Or almost $11 million by the time that they're 55, not, not 65, not full retirement age, by age 55.

• 1:02:45Brian Preston?

  But here's the thing, because these numbers are starting to get really big and starting to get away from us. This is what I would call the dream plan. You know, we're always talking about putting on your 3D glasses, which is your dream plan, you're down to earth. And then don't skip out on the doo doo plan. I think we ought to kind of, this is awesome, but we ought to amend this because what they don't know is life is going to happen.

• 1:03:05Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:03:05Brian Preston?

  Whether that's health, whether that's kids, more than likely at some point, probably around age 35 or so. Instead of them having this huge income that they have now, they might be more moderate around $150,000 a year. What would that, if they drop down to a single income at 150,000 or a combo income that's at 150,000. What would that plan look like?

• 1:03:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, obviously we'd still want to follow the financial order of operations. Let that be the guide. So we're going to assume that Dom continues to get his match. We're going to assume that they continue to put money in the Roth IRAs, continue to the HSA. And they're going to now take those sinking fund allocations and they're going to split it 50 50. I'm still going to have some money go into the sinking fund, but I am going to now have some going to the portfolio so that we can still have that 25% savings rate, even at $150,000 income. And even if their savings dropped down to about $3,000 a month, they're still on the path because they've done so much hard work early on that by the time they get to 50, they could have a portfolio of almost 5.9 million dollars.

• 1:04:07Speaker 04

  And by 55, again, early retirement, a little over nine and a half million dollars, even if their income were to drop down to 150.

• 1:04:15Brian Preston?

  Whoa, okay, so we've dream plan works, down to earth plan works. Okay, let's do the do do plan. What happens if, maybe it's a medical issue or something? What if the income went all the way down to $100,000 a year?

• 1:04:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, so we said, what if, if that's where their income goes, then it's likely going to be true that all they can do is put money towards Dom getting his full 401k match and then maybe maxing out one Roth IRA. That's probably going to be all that they're able to do. But even if they were to drop their savings down and now they make $100,000 and they're only able to save a touch under $1,400 a month, they're still on a fantastic trajectory at $350,000 saved today, assuming a 9.2% annual rate of return. By the time they get to 50, the portfolio would still be worth a little over 4.1 million. Or by the time they get to 55, over 6.5 million. And if, if you think about what a 6.5 million dollar portfolio could generate,

• 1:05:08Speaker 04

  it's still going to generate more income than they would be making in the illustration, even with the reduced savings.

• 1:05:15Brian Preston?

  You know, this, this shows me the power of them just saving so early and often, right from the beginning. It almost makes, it shows the power that their army of dollars is already so big behind them. They've already done the heavy lifting.

• 1:05:28Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:05:28Brian Preston?

  Right now, so we can actually tell them, hey, you have a lot of options because of your hard work behind you. It's time to start living for the now much, much more.

• 1:05:36Speaker 04

  Now, even on the do do plan, we didn't even assume that Dom's income would increase or anything like that. So even the do do plan is probably a worse scenario than they're likely going to face from a financial standpoint. So I think it's super, super conservative. Now, one little note, because this came up in the conversation we had with them. It is true, they will have to make a decision. If Katie is participating in a flexible spending account, even though they have covered under different insurance plans, he would not be able to do an HSA. So they need to have a conversation. around, okay, we're going to do FSA or we're going to do HSA. How are we going to approach that? How are we going to prioritize that? Cause you can't do both, even though they're under separate coverages.

• 1:06:11Brian Preston?

  Yeah, that was one of those things that, you know, we like to know all answers, but it's nice that we were able to go look it out and figure out, no, it's, it's true. The FSA really does blow it up unless it's some specific employee only FSA, which those are really rare, you know, limited purpose dental vision. I doubt that's going to be the case. So it really does need to come down to which one are we going to do? Flexible spending account? Are we going to do the health savings account with the triple tax advantage?

• 1:06:35Speaker 04

  All right. So when we think about their homework, this is the first thing, and I think this is kind of a fun one. We want them to get more comfortable living in the moment.

• 1:06:43Brian Preston?

  For sure.

• 1:06:44Speaker 04

  They are in such a fantastic spot and have done so much hard work. They've now been able to give themselves freedom. And if they have anxiety around unknown unknowns, they have the margin to be able to create sinking funds to satisfy those unknowns.

• 1:06:58Brian Preston?

  They just need to go look at these portfolio paths that we're going to send them and then say, no, it's okay to go enjoy today.

• 1:07:04Speaker 04

  And that's why if, if you want to paint the house, by all means, paint the house. If you want to create the memory, by all means, create the memories. That's kind of homework out of number one. Number two, I do think they need to think through following the financial order of operations. They were kind of piecemealing it and they weren't, they were a little foo-ish.

• 1:07:21Brian Preston?

  Katie wasn't even maxing out her Roth IRA. I mean, come on, we're, we're missing some basics here.

• 1:07:25Speaker 04

  So we think they should go back and make sure they're actually walking through the financial order of operations. And then number three, once they get these parts and pieces in place, trust the plan. One of the reasons we have the financial, one of the reasons we even have financial plans at all is so that we can remove the anxiety associated with money. They have future goals. They have intermediate goals. They have now goals. They have the ability to be able to tackle all three of those if they can put the plan in place and stick to the plan.

• 1:07:52Brian Preston?

  Yeah. I mean, and, and I'll just say it, Dom and Katie were two impressive 28 year olds. I was so impressed with everything that they had accomplished. Bo, if other people want to come on Making a Millionaire, what do they need to do?

• 1:08:06Speaker 04

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

• 1:08:16Brian Preston?

  Katie, Dom, thank you, thank you, thank you for coming on. Guys, we're going to keep creating great content, both on the Money Guy Show as well as I'm Making a Millionaire. I'm your host, Brian, joined by Bo. Money Guy team, out.

• 1:08:29Speaker 04

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

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