They Want to Retire Early. Their Lifestyle Says Otherwise.

Making $400,000 a year sounds like financial freedom—but a high income doesn’t automatically build wealth. In this Making a Millionaire episode, Brian and Bo help a millionaire couple confront lifestyle creep, a 15% savings rate, HELOC debt, emergency savings, early retirement planning, Backdoor Roth IRAs, 401(k)s, and the real cost of spending more as your income grows. Can they retire early while traveling, raising kids, and enjoying their money today? See how a financial plan, higher savings rate, debt payoff strategy, and disciplined investing could turn their incredible income into lasting financial independence. Jump start your journey with our FREE financial resources⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Reach your goals faster with our products⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Take the relationship to the next level: become a client⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe on YouTube for early access and go beyond the podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Connect with us on social media for more content⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Bring confidence to your wealth building with simplified strategies from The Money Guy. Learn how to apply financial tactics that go beyond common sense and help you reach your money goals faster. Make your assets do the heavy lifting so you can quit worrying and start living a more fulfilled life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:26Speaker 01

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• 0:45Speaker 02

  But I say that to him all the time. Like, I see what we take home and I'm like, where? How do we not have more money? Where is it? Because we, we blow it.

• 0:51Brian Preston?

  Yeah, I'm seeing y'all's income. And then I'm seeing you lament that you want to pay off that debt. And I'm like, we're way too nice. I think if Dave Ramsey was here, he'd be like, what are you, what are you going to mean? You've got to take the kids on all these vacations and all this stuff. I should harness my inner Dave a little bit. No, you need to get serious about paying off all this stuff. Because it's crazy. You have a lot of money. You're rich.

• 1:18Speaker 04

  So have y'all, have y'all been in Nashville before? Have y'all, okay.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  Years ago, pre-kids, yeah.

• 1:22Speaker 04

  Pre-kids, how long ago was pre-kids?

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Well, we have a six-year-old. So probably came here like 10 years ago.

• 1:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, for New Year's Eve.

• 1:29Speaker 04

  Oh, you have six and a half? How many kids you have?

• 1:30Speaker 02

  Two, a three and a six. Actually, she's going to be four tomorrow.

• 1:33Speaker 04

  Let's go. How long have you guys been married?

• 1:35Speaker 05

  It was 12 years in July.

• 1:37Speaker 04

  12 years in July, awesome. How's it been?

• 1:39Brian Preston?

  See, y'all took some time for, for each other before you decided to start doing the kid thing.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  For sure. We had a really good time before. Not that we're having a good time now.

• 1:48Speaker 04

  And a really good time after kids, right?

• 1:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, just a different kind of time.

• 1:51Speaker 04

  When the kids watch this, they know that we're having a great time after kids also.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:55Speaker 04

  So what, uh, so how'd you guys meet? Walk, give us a story. What's the, what's the background? How'd this all come to be?

• 1:59Speaker 02

  Playing soccer. We, uh, yeah, we both like coed indoor soccer and.

• 2:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, so mutual friends, got on the same team and.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Played together for years and we were just really good friends, golfing buddies and then.

• 2:10Speaker 04

  Walk, what, what were you guys do, like, what were you guys doing when you met? Vocationally?

• 2:14Speaker 02

  Um, I was a nurse.

• 2:16Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  So I hadn't been, I'm an NP now, so I hadn't done that yet. So I was a nurse, um, I was a nursing director for an assisted living at that time.

• 2:24Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:24Speaker 05

  Uh, I was a HVAC technician.

• 2:26Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:27Speaker 05

  So I'm in the same field, but in a much higher up position now.

• 2:31Speaker 04

  You're not having to actually go out and crawl on roofs.

• 2:34Speaker 05

  I still have to do that occasionally, but that's more, that's more.

• 2:38Brian Preston?

  It means it's a bad situation.

• 2:39Speaker 05

  It's a bad day.

• 2:40Brian Preston?

  Things have gone really sideways.

• 2:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, like commercial HVAC or like residential?

• 2:44Speaker 05

  Uh, residential.

• 2:44Speaker 04

  Residential, awesome. Okay, so you guys got married 12 years ago. Uh, and then, all right, so walk us through, like financially, when you guys got married, were you on the same page from a financial standpoint? Just talk about money a lot?

• 2:57Speaker 02

  I don't think we ever really talked about money because it just never was like, you know, I was a nurse, I was making pretty good money as a single person. So, um, I was in the process of buying a home when we first started, or I just really wanted to buy a home when we first started dating, which was kind of an awkward thing because we weren't married. So we didn't want to like buy a home together, but we just started dating. Um, so I actually ended up buying a house and he moved in with me. We just like paid everything together kind of right from then. So we never had like a weird money. We just sort of combined and.

• 3:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, luckily she's always had more than me. So I was all, always all in like, yeah, you can.

• 3:31Speaker 04

  Whatever you say, this is awesome.

• 3:33Speaker 05

  You can have my scraps.

• 3:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, I love it. So no real money struggle, like you guys started both, when y'all got married, you both were making like a good household income.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:41Speaker 04

  Uh, and so no real struggles in terms of like, you know, you hear something like, oh yeah, I remember we were eating like beans and potatoes every night. That was not your story.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:49Speaker 04

  Starting.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Our mortgage was based on just my income. So when the two of us got together, we were comfortable.

• 3:54Speaker 04

  More income.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:55Speaker 04

  Share expenses.

• 3:56Speaker 02

  We certainly never talked about the future or saving or anything in that age. So we were just living, you know, getting money, spending it, so.

• 4:04Speaker 04

  So when'd you guys start talking about like the future and saving and building? When did that conversation happen?

• 4:09Speaker 02

  Well, you kind of always have, have saved.

• 4:12Speaker 05

  I luckily, because I will buy, I am, I would never say that I'm good with money by any means. I'm certainly better now, but at that time I certainly wasn't. But I, I had a, I always had a, an idea like look to the people you want to emulate like for them. Like I'm not an innovator. Someone's already done it and they've done it better than me. How'd they do it? Um, and so I had a friend who's, his father owned a realty, a realty company and did really well. And so he told me at 18, I was talking about, uh, my job offer is 401K. And he was just like, get into it as much as you can.

• 4:45Speaker 04

  Love that.

• 4:46Speaker 05

  Use the company match. He's like, pretend that money doesn't exist. And then even if they take it away, just save, just take that same amount of money away and save. So I always.

• 4:54Speaker 04

  And how old were you when you were given that advice?

• 4:56Speaker 05

  18.

• 4:56Speaker 04

  Oh, man.

• 4:57Speaker 05

  When I started out full-time.

• 4:58Speaker 04

  Awesome.

• 4:58Speaker 05

  I did two years of college and it didn't, it really wasn't for me. Uh, my father was in a trade and he was always looking for help. And so I went to work for him full-time at 20 and kind of never looked back. Thought I'd like, I'll go back to school. And then, you know, 25 years later, here I am.

• 5:14Speaker 04

  So you've been saving since 18?

• 5:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, in a 401K.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  So he had a pretty good 401K when we first met. I was putting peanuts in mine because I just, nobody, my parents, we never talked about money. Money was never, you got it, you spent it. My mom is a spender.

• 5:27Speaker 04

  It was about making ends meet.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wasn't, I wasn't worried. Yeah, no one ever talked to me about that, so.

• 5:32Speaker 04

  So when you got married, did y'all have that conversation? He's like, hey, I'm saving, you're not, should we? Or it was just like, I'm kind of doing my thing, you're doing your thing.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, we just never.

• 5:40Brian Preston?

  When y'all moved in together, just set up a joint account? How'd y'all pay the bills?

• 5:44Speaker 02

  I think so, yeah. I think we set up a joint account.

• 5:46Brian Preston?

  So it was like you're, you're checking, we'll get into emergency funds, checking, is that all joint right now? No separate, separation on that stuff? Okay, okay, keeps it simple.

• 5:54Speaker 04

  So, but you guys were kind enough to share a net worth statement with us. And we look at where you guys are right now. Here you go. And, and remind me how old each of you are?

• 6:01Speaker 02

  I'm 40.

• 6:02Speaker 04

  40?

• 6:03Speaker 05

  46.

• 6:03Speaker 04

  46, so right here in our early to mid 40s.

• 6:06Brian Preston?

  Just babies.

• 6:07Speaker 04

  Just baby, that's right.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  In my head.

• 6:10Speaker 05

  46 with a new hip, so I feel a little older.

• 6:13Speaker 04

  A million dollar net worth, right? You were officially in the two comma club, which is amazing.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  We had champagne that day.

• 6:19Speaker 04

  Did you, did you really? I love that. Uh, so obviously you've been doing, so you said, oh, I didn't really save a lot early on, but you must have done something right. So give us, how'd you get from like, I didn't really pay a whole lot of attention to it, to here we are today with a million bucks?

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Dave Ramsey.

• 6:35Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I actually just had to reach out to the friend that introduced me and said, when was that? In 2022, I was at work and I heard Mike, one of the nurses, talking about debt and, you know, how silly it is and how people spend. And we've never really had a lot of debt. My dad said to me early on once, if you don't have the cash to pay for it, you can't have it.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  Love it.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  So I never, you know, maybe a thousand dollars on a credit card here and there, but I've never, we both have never really been in debt. So I, he kind of just, I said, what? And he gave me, um, Total Money Makeover. And so I read it and at that point I had student loans, a car payment, you know, all the regular things, a mortgage. And so I said, we started listening to the podcast and yelling at everybody every day. And I said like, this is it, you know? And so I just went down the rabbit hole. I read every finance book you can think of, every podcast. That's how I found you guys. He had a business. He sold it to a big company. So we got a buyout, not, not a ton, but enough to pay off my student loans. So I said, we're knocking them out. So we paid off our student, my student loans.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  And from then on out, I just, I opened a brokerage account, maxed out my 401K and.

• 7:42Speaker 04

  So really starting in 2022 is, it sounds like that's when you started like taking it seriously.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:47Speaker 04

  So over the course of four years, you've been able to cover a lot of ground. Obviously there was a business sale that helped with that, but.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:52Speaker 04

  Been able to cover a lot of ground in a relatively short amount of time.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:55Speaker 04

  That's awesome.

• 7:56Brian Preston?

  What are y'all saving? Because I see that income is, is pretty big. And it's, what I was curious about when I looked at the, the net worth, I couldn't tell how long y'all had that income, what the savings rate is.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:07Brian Preston?

  I'm just trying to figure out the health of living on less than you make is.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we have not made that income. That's this year.

• 8:14Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  So I, for the last eight years, have been working for a small private company, um, as an NP. And I made 120,000 for probably the first five years of that. Put a little pressure on them and got a raise to 140. And then last year, we got bought out by a nationwide company. It's actually a year ago, like this month. Um, so with that new company, there was a lot of room for any higher income because I, I get paid on based what I bill instead of a set salary. So I kind of.

• 8:45Speaker 04

  So in the last year is really when this income's kind of blown up here.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:49Brian Preston?

  What do you think your savings rate is?

• 8:51Speaker 04

  Or even walk us through what accounts you saving and how much you put in those accounts?

• 8:54Speaker 02

  So we both met, well, I maxed out my 401K. He puts, I think 22,000 in his, so he's almost maxed. Um, we put $320 a week into a brokerage account. And then I think like 150 a month in a crypto.

• 9:10Speaker 04

  Tell me more about, tell me more about that. She's like, I don't really pay attention to finances, but let me buy some crypto.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Like, they're gonna hate that. I don't know where I got into it. My best friend's husband's a crypto, you know? So he introduced me and I'm a very competitive person. So it was like something for

• 9:28Speaker 04

  If you can do it, I can do it.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, and something for me to just, you know, it's so volatile. So like the excitement of looking at it and trying to, so I kind of dove deep. We didn't go crazy, but we got in. I've, I've since backed out a little bit.

• 9:40Brian Preston?

  You like going to Vegas?

• 9:41Speaker 04

  How much was it?

• 9:41Speaker 02

  No, I love to gamble, but I don't go to Vegas.

• 9:44Speaker 04

  You said how much?

• 9:45Brian Preston?

  I just saw the sparkle in your eye where you're like, I like the volatility. That's, most people don't like that, but you consider it future.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  If you put me at a blackjack table, it's hard to get me out. So I'm like, get away from me.

• 9:54Speaker 04

  I love it.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:55Speaker 04

  And how much you doing in crypto, you said?

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Like a hundred and fifty right now.

• 9:59Brian Preston?

  A week or a month?

• 10:00Speaker 02

  No, a month, a month, yeah.

• 10:02Speaker 04

  Um, what about like, uh, Roth IRAs, HSAs, any of that kind of stuff?

• 10:05Speaker 02

  HSA, I do a hundred dollars a paycheck, so that's 200 bucks a month.

• 10:09Brian Preston?

  So you're saving somewhere between 12 to 1300 a month, just into the brokerage account?

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:14Speaker 05

  Okay. We don't do anything consistent with the kids.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, we have 529s for the kids.

• 10:19Speaker 04

  Okay, awesome. Are you putting money in there?

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Hundred, hundred dollars a month for each kid, yeah.

• 10:23Speaker 05

  That we're trying to get more outside investors to fund.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, grandparents and things like that. If you guys are interested, let me know.

• 10:29Speaker 04

  Crowdfunding, I like that. Crowdfunding the kids' education, that's great. Okay, so you said, uh, what was it? Thirteen hundred dollars a month we have going into the taxable account? So that's 1300 times 12. It's 15,000 plus 24, 5 plus 22,000. That puts us at what? Sixty-two thousand dollars annual savings roughly. So if we do 62,000 and do a 412,000 dollar income, it's about a 15% savings rate. Does that kind of align with where you thought your savings rate would be?

• 11:00Speaker 02

  No, I, well, it was higher when I was making a lot less last year. So I, I felt like we were on track with like the 20 to 25%, but then, you know, this, this year has, yeah, really.

• 11:11Brian Preston?

  Do you feel like you're ahead of the curve, behind the curve, or right where you're supposed to be?

• 11:13Speaker 02

  Every day I feel different. There's some days I say to him, like, look at us, you know? A million dollars.

• 11:19Speaker 04

  Champagne, we had a bit of champagne.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  And then literally two days later, I'm like, talk me off the ledge. We're doing terrible, I'm not saving enough. I have no idea. I, I take the foo out and I'm like, where are we? I think we're at eight and then I'm like, no, we're at three, we have a HELOC, you know? I know, I don't, I'm all over.

• 11:35Speaker 05

  I've like woken up in the morning and she's awake and she's like, I haven't even slept. We have 1,200 dollars in the credit card. Okay, let's just pay it and, I know, but we shouldn't even be putting it on it and.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  And then we book a trip three weeks later. Like I can't, I'm all over the place.

• 11:51Speaker 04

  Do you carry a credit card balance or like when you have that 1,200, do you pay it off?

• 11:54Speaker 02

  We never, haven't had a balance in five years.

• 11:57Speaker 04

  So one of the, it sounds like your question is, okay, are we doing the things we're supposed to be doing? Or are we not doing enough?

• 12:03Speaker 02

  Well, yeah.

• 12:03Brian Preston?

  And bring it, bring it to, begin with the end of month. How much longer do you all want to work?

• 12:08Speaker 02

  Not longer, not long.

• 12:09Speaker 05

  Well, I think that's another reason we're here is.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Our, is to retire early. That's, you know, I found fire, not that we want to do fire, but we've pretty aligned that we don't want to work.

• 12:20Brian Preston?

  So 40, 46, you said?

• 12:22Speaker 02

  Our goal's like 10 years.

• 12:24Speaker 04

  10 years.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  So I constantly run projections on.

• 12:26Brian Preston?

  Is that together or do y'all want to stagger the retirements or?

• 12:29Speaker 02

  Stagger, I would like him to retire first and then I'll go part-time.

• 12:33Brian Preston?

  So give me, give me some ages, put some, put some details on that. So 55, 56?

• 12:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, I do, I do.

• 12:39Brian Preston?

  And how about for you?

• 12:41Speaker 02

  I can do part-time, you know, I, I do a lot of, um, remote stuff, so I could do part-time as long as I feel like it. So I think that's what we're trying to figure out, like, how long would I have to do that? What kind of income would I need to keep us alive?

• 12:53Speaker 04

  So 10 years from now, we're gonna have a 16-year-old and a 14-year-old. When you think about like retirement and financial independence and not working anymore, what's that look like to you guys? You said you're gonna be working part-time, but like, are you gonna live where you're living now? Are you gonna do the things that you're doing now? Are you gonna travel? Like, what does the lifestyle look like at that stage?

• 13:12Speaker 02

  I think my main goal, the reason I want to retire is to be available for the kids. Those are tough ages and I'm nervous, to be honest. You know, I have some friends with teenagers because we waited older in life and I know what's coming. And I just think I want to be there as much as possible, at least one of us. And, uh, you know, we, we have vacationed a lot recently now that we have more money and that's really important to us. You know, kids are hard at three and six. And they're the greatest when there's no schedules and we're on vacation and we're all having a really good time. So we try to reproduce that as much as we can.

• 13:49Speaker 05

  And they're already, they're already both at the ages where they're now referencing the trips we just went on and.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  Making memories, like that's huge for us.

• 13:56Speaker 05

  It's just great to hear and like I said, we have friends with teenagers. So then you travel with teenagers and they don't tend to care as much and aren't as appreciative. So we want to do it now while we have the time, but we also have to work and.

• 14:07Speaker 04

  Well, and one of the great things about traveling when your kids are young is you build this habit of, hey, this is what we do as a family. We spend time together, we go on place, we experience these things. It's not a bad habit to build, so long as you're making sure you're doing it in the right order, at the right cost, appropriately, and not sacrificing future stuff.

• 14:23Brian Preston?

  Well, you said something, Jamie, that you catch her waking up in the middle of the night and she's just wide awake. What, what's, what's going on with, where's the, because it sounds, we're on vacations, we're living our best life, we're making more money than we've ever made. Why would you be like?

• 14:39Speaker 02

  I think because I feel like I, I toggle about that, like maybe we shouldn't go on vacation. Maybe, like I think about the opportunity cost of everything. So I buy something and I'm like, if we had invested that, we could retire with that much more money in 10 years. You know, I'm always running projections.

• 14:55Brian Preston?

  And how often? How often is this stress that's waking you up and giving you? Is this like a, just something that you feel like your nervous system is constantly under fight or flight? Or is this something just every now and then you have this stress?

• 15:05Speaker 04

  Jamie, would you say this is every now and then?

• 15:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, Jamie, you answered the question.

• 15:10Speaker 05

  No, it's not that often, definitely right after trips, like any big expense, like.

• 15:16Speaker 04

  A lot of buyers are more spires.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  The, the HELOC is.

• 15:19Speaker 05

  HELOC's a direct result of, uh, we're renovating the bathroom.

• 15:22Brian Preston?

  What, what, okay, that's a bathroom renovation.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  Very expensive bathroom.

• 15:26Brian Preston?

  That's not vacations, that's not cars, that's actually truly tied to the house.

• 15:30Speaker 04

  How much was the total HELOC when you took it out?

• 15:32Speaker 02

  It, well, it's, it's like where you, we wrote checks to different contractors, so it just like bills, so like.

• 15:37Speaker 04

  How much, I'm asking, how much did the bathroom cost when you did it?

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Sixty-five.

• 15:41Speaker 04

  Sixty-five million for a bathroom. Is this a master bathroom?

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Master bathroom, it's the nicest bathroom you've ever seen.

• 15:46Speaker 05

  It sounds like a very, very nice bathroom.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:49Speaker 04

  A very, very nice bathroom. So, okay, as you think about having, so is it done now? Is this, okay, we're not writing any more checks out of this, this is it. Uh, when you think about like what, you have this, you know, $60,000 at 6.75%. What's your plan or thought process for paying that off? How are you guys attacking that presently?

• 16:06Speaker 02

  So I pay 1,400 dollars a month on that. I think my payment's like 250, so I try to crush it as hard as I can. But I think that's, that's probably what I'm looking for a little advice about. You know, I know mathematically, 6.75 is high, but I can also make 12% in the market. And I'm very competitive. So I, you know, there's times I'm like, do I pause the brokerage account and hit the HELOC? Or do I split the, you know? But I hate that HELOC very much, so.

• 16:39Speaker 04

  But you love that bathroom?

• 16:40Speaker 02

  I love the bathroom.

• 16:40Speaker 04

  You love the bathroom, hate the HELOC.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  I love hate, I love hate the bathroom, you know? Yeah.

• 16:44Brian Preston?

  I was gonna ask, just to, to kind of keep us from making desperate decisions, because there's, you sold a company, but now you're, you're a manager for a bigger company.

• 16:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:53Brian Preston?

  And then you've recently been acquired and, but y'all both work in jobs. I mean, whenever you, you watch TV shows and they talk about the end of the world, will they, uh? Y'all are kind of in the two places, you're like, ha, ha, ha.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:05Brian Preston?

  Because I mean, you're, you're working in heating and air.

• 17:08Speaker 05

  I've never had like a fear of it's, like if I lost, somehow lost my job or the company goes belly up, like I just can literally walk to your house next door and install air conditioning for you.

• 17:19Brian Preston?

  Yeah, they make South Park episodes about, you know, how you're not, you know, you're, you're like going to be the ones ruling the world because we're fixing everybody's heating and air systems. But I still think about the fact that three months is the minimum we like in emergency reserves. And then I look at, y'all have 25,000 dollars.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:39Brian Preston?

  Do y'all spend, let's do 25 divided by three, y'all, y'all spend eight grand a month?

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 17:44Speaker 04

  How much do y'all spend a month?

• 17:45Speaker 02

  We just did, I think it's 15,000.

• 17:48Brian Preston?

  15,000, so you know, I hate to do public math, but that's 45,000 dollars just if we were, we're, we're doing the, the bare minimum.

• 17:57Speaker 04

  She said, oh, no, no, the 13,000.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  It's 13, it's not 15.

• 18:00Speaker 05

  To, to be fair, this is all like a recent uptick, which is another, this, another reason we're here, because it's kind of newfound wealth to us too. It's like our new norm.

• 18:09Speaker 04

  Can I tell you two things you said that kind of concerned me? And I don't mean concern, concern's probably too aggressive, but that's the second time I've kind of heard a reference to this. Hey, this income is like relatively new. Our savings rate was really, really good when our income was lower. But now that our income has gone up, our savings rate's not as impressive.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:23Speaker 04

  It sounds like as some of these improvements to the financial life have happened, it's gone more towards lifestyle than towards like future foundation building. Am I describing that correctly?

• 18:33Speaker 02

  Oh, 100%, yeah.

• 18:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, we took more vacations this year than we have ever before.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  But I guess, I guess that's what I'm struggling with. You know, what we were doing before was based on our salaries and, and seemed like we were doing okay. So then we have this more money, do I need to be saving more or, you know what I mean? Or can we live our lives?

• 18:50Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  And I, we recently had this conversation because I'm in healthcare and, and what I do is, um, You know elderly, so I see a lot of people at the end of their life. And so every day I see people laying in the bed and I'm thinking, and at all ages, you know, so it's like at any point, it can be taken away. So I don't want to wait until I'm 65 or 70 to like live this life. So I think that's what we go back and forth. Like we had this money, like let's take the kids to Disney. Let's do this. You know, I don't wanna, I don't wanna be a miser. I don't want to save all this money just for a rainy day, you know?

• 19:23Brian Preston?

  We said the income is new at 400,000. What was it beforehand? It was like 250? Was it 300?

• 19:29Speaker 02

  So I made 140 before we got acquired and you were at 95.

• 19:34Brian Preston?

  Is 250, 250 is reasonable.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:37Brian Preston?

  So and you'll know, you've listened to our content. I'm just spitballing this. We're gonna get you real answers when we kinda start throwing it all together and putting a plan together. But at 40 years of age, you should at least aspire to have like three times your income. You know, by 50, you should be somewhere around 70. You're not 50 yet. So I'm telling you, we're somewhere, we're somewhere in between there.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:58Brian Preston?

  So depending upon, and it sounded like we wanna base it more off the older age, because that's when the first check mark is on, hey, are we at some type of financial independence so we can be part of this fire movement and move on? So we probably should be shooting for somewhere between five to six times y'all's annual income. And I, look, I'm not even going to average. Let's just go, cause I wanna, what I'm trying to figure out is the lifestyle obviously pacing more than what we should be doing. So that you, is there something to these wake up in the middle of the night things? And if we did $250,000 times six, you can see that's right around a million and a half dollars. And if we took out your house.

• 20:37Speaker 04

  If we look at just your portfolio value right now in the net worth statement?

• 20:40Brian Preston?

  Y'all are looking at about $600,000 of investment. You know, it is right at $600,000. Y'all are very fortunate to be cash flow rich, but net worth wise, you are behind.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:54Brian Preston?

  I mean, you probably, that's what that waking up in the middle of the night is, cause you're not closing the loop.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:59Brian Preston?

  That you have a plan and that you're doing things on the right terms. Because anytime I hear somebody's having stress from the money, I always think about, have we created a plan that should then release me mentally to live my best life? And because y'all are in, living your best life, but you never created the plan. So you can let go of it. And you're, of the two of you, you're the financially, you're the driver of the financial house.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:26Brian Preston?

  So you're bearing most of that, that risk. And that's the part that we gotta get you, y'all've got all the tools. It's just, is it being fulfilled? Or are we just going to wake up one day after taking a passive role and then find out, oh no. If we'd only acted a few years earlier, this would be a much easier decision.

• 21:43Speaker 04

  We did the math. You guys are saving 15% right now, based on what you kinda laid out for us. If the goal was to save 25%, because she knows a round number, that'd be 10% more, 10% more on a $400,000 income is about 40 grand. If I told you guys, hey, with the $13,000 a month spend that you guys had right now, when you define somewhere between $2,000 to $3,000 additional to save on a monthly basis, does that make you freak out? Or do you think, okay, no, we could, we could find that?

• 22:11Speaker 05

  Oh no, we can find it. It's like, I mean, you can look at restaurants. I mean, we definitely like.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  I mean, the daycare and the loan repayment is $3,000.

• 22:20Speaker 04

  We have to have a.

• 22:22Speaker 05

  What we'd, what we'd rather do is wait till those things, they'll find out.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  Yes. I mean, shop, you know, 1,100 on shopping, 2,600 on travel. Yeah.

• 22:30Speaker 04

  And so you make, you make a great point. Hey, what we'd rather, we'd rather wait for these things to fall off. And likely, there is nothing wrong with that. But anytime we make a financial decision, there's an opportunity cost associated with that. Meaning, we know that daycare is gonna be at least a year before it falls off, just because of aging. And then with the HELOC where it is, at $400 a month, 6.75, we can amortize that out and see how quickly we get that paid off. But is waiting for those to be gone, what if what that requires is, okay, well, our retirement timeline might not be 10 years, it might be 12 years. Is that an acceptable trade off? Cause that's really the world in which you're living now. If this were, hey, we're gonna work until age 65 and normal retirement, then yeah, it's not that dicey. But when you have an aggressive

• 23:11Speaker 04

  goal, like retiring at 50 or at 55, or going into pseudo-retirement, the gravity of the decisions you make and the timeline on which you make those decisions, carry a lot more weight. And so is just waiting to get the savings right where it is to be worth pushing back that goal? Or is that goal of retiring top priority?

• 23:34Speaker 05

  Depends on the day. Depends on the trip. I just, I feel like she constantly asks, should I get this? Like it's, or like a $50 shirt, should I get this? And my answer's always that, yeah. Cause I just see how hard she's working all the time. Like you can see that our net worth is a lot, a lot of it's driven by her, not really. Mine's more the steady kinda baseline. So she's, she's got three jobs currently and a lot of on-call stuff. So there's a lot of stuff in the middle of the night. So it's like not sacrificing for the kids. So she's still there for the kids, but then on-call from midnight to 6:00 AM.

• 24:11Speaker 04

  It's intense.

• 24:12Speaker 05

  And so I see how hard she works. So it just seems so like weird to me to just like, just get a shirt. Like if it makes you, if that's gonna make you happy. But then she buys a shirt and it doesn't make her happy. And so I think, I think cutting down the savings in restaurants is, we've already talked about is just an easy fix.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  Not savings, but restaurant.

• 24:32Speaker 05

  Oh, sorry, sorry. The rest, the spending on the restaurant and shopping is a pretty easy, like, it, cause when you put it in on paper, like I didn't write like $2,000 a month, that's like, yeah, we should be able to easily, that seems absurd. And we should be able to easily cut that down. Of course, then we talk about like how everything's just so expensive. Like we, like this little coffee shop down the street from us and we go there and it's like $50 to get like.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Lunch.

• 24:57Speaker 05

  Lunch.

• 24:58Speaker 04

  I'll buy you all a cup of coffee.

• 25:00Speaker 05

  Then we start doing the math. It's like, okay, it makes sense why we're spending a thousand.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  I downloaded Monarch a few months ago.

• 25:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, there we go.

• 25:07Speaker 02

  And it put it in the things. And it was like mortgage, travel. It was the same. And I was like, ooh, should we be spending the same amount on travel as we are on our mortgage?

• 25:14Speaker 04

  What's interesting, even in here you guys talk, I don't think the decision is as binary as you're making. It's not, either we make memories today and we travel, we do these things with our kids, or we save for the future. I think that it's probably somewhere in the middle of that. I think there are ways that you can live life today and experience the things you wanna do and be able to travel, but it might not be to the same extent and degree that you have over this past year. You may have overcorrected on the today memories, or at least the today spending. And I would argue, you can still make amazing memories today without having the same price tag.

• 25:47Brian Preston?

  There's something that's bothering me a little bit in the fact that, and by the way, and I wanna talk about y'all's dynamic of who manages and so forth and find out how that all works. But I see the, I think you gave us a clue when you said, we spend $15,000 a month, but then when it popped up on the screen and it was 13,4, like, no, no, no, we spent 13,4.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  I told you I had to bet it.

• 26:09Brian Preston?

  But when I was, now I did the, and you guys know this answer, I bet. I bet Gina does. Is the, is four, if you take $412,000 and just divide it by 12.

• 26:21Speaker 00

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• 27:14Brian Preston?

  That comes up to be $34,000 a month.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, where's the rest?

• 27:19Brian Preston?

  So, so, yeah, you, this is an exercise. I mean, I love math, because math kinda, it cuts through all the noise of the world and you get, you get real quick to answers. So I just did, you know, cause y'all are probably in like the 24% bracket, but you have to run through all the different tax tables. So I just said, hey, what if they're just taking home, you know, 70? You know, so you taking home 80% or you taking home, they're taking, they're not taking home 80%.

• 27:46Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 27:47Brian Preston?

  I think they're.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  I can tell you what we take home.

• 27:48Brian Preston?

  Yeah, that's what, that's what I wanna know.

• 27:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, what's the?

• 27:50Brian Preston?

  What's the take homes every day?

• 27:52Speaker 02

  Somewhere, not always, but somewhere between, I would say 16 and 20, depending on the month. My greatest month's 20, maybe average 16. It just totally depends.

• 28:01Brian Preston?

  17 after, after all the savings. That's automatic, you know, that's kinda going out for retirement and so forth.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:07Brian Preston?

  You've just answered the question. You know this. Is that, so if, if there's, if all the savings goals, we have a hole of about $3,500.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:17Brian Preston?

  That's unaccounted for.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:19Brian Preston?

  And that, that's big.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  I know.

• 28:21Brian Preston?

  And I think that's probably, that's the part that, cause when we do this plan for y'all, I really do want you to have peace of mind.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:27Brian Preston?

  But it's going to be worthless if you tell us you're spending 11,000 to 12,000 or 13,000 a month. And then the real number is, is you're consistently spending 16.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:36Brian Preston?

  Because it, that gap, cause we're gonna, by the way, when you quit work and when you cross that threshold, that's the scariest thing in the world, is when you walk away from gainful employment and now you're counting on the money to work for you. It works great as long as the numbers are good.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:51Brian Preston?

  But if you're having to pull at a faster pace than what you're supposed to be, it blows up really quick. And then the market gets, I know you love volatility now.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:00Brian Preston?

  But it's gonna, you're gonna hate it when you're in the retirement phase.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. I do think, it's just so hard to tease it out. I do think there's a lot of stuff missing, but I think a lot of it was probably the bathroom. Cause honestly, we wrote a lot of checks, cause I didn't wanna use the HELOC. So we paid a ton of cash.

• 29:14Brian Preston?

  And is that really fresh?

• 29:15Speaker 02

  Like painters.

• 29:16Speaker 04

  Hold on, so it was not a 65,000 on our bathroom?

• 29:18Speaker 05

  No, this bathroom were 85 easy.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  I don't know. I don't even know at this point.

• 29:23Brian Preston?

  Problem with construction projects.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  I know, I know.

• 29:25Brian Preston?

  It's just, cause everything's possible. It used to be $200 a time. Now it's like a thousand dollars a time.

• 29:31Speaker 04

  My contractor told me the same thing. We can do anything you want.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:34Brian Preston?

  How big is your budget?

• 29:35Speaker 02

  So there was probably chat, like I think the painters was like two grand. I just wrote a check in cash. So there were, there's, yeah, I mean, the money just.

• 29:41Brian Preston?

  So they just leave last week? I mean, how fresh is this bathroom?

• 29:44Speaker 02

  Within the year. Yeah. Yeah.

• 29:46Brian Preston?

  Okay.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  But that's what I say to him all the time.

• 29:48Speaker 05

  And the bulk of it was like.

• 29:50Speaker 04

  The fall, like, or like six months ago.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. But I say that to him all the time. Like, I see what we take home and I'm like, where, how do we not have more money? Where is it? Because we, we blow it.

• 29:59Brian Preston?

  Yeah, this is fixable.

• 30:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:01Brian Preston?

  And that's why I feel so good about it.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  That's why I said, we need these guys to help.

• 30:05Brian Preston?

  I'm going to be able, we're going to be able to behind the scenes, take all of your, as long as the variables are good. That's why it's on, it's imperative, and that's why I think it's on the homework list. Go back through these, use Monarch.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:17Brian Preston?

  To, to give us real concrete numbers. So we, we just have to balance that. And if y'all, but if we get the numbers right, this is, then it just becomes a math equation.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:25Brian Preston?

  To, to figure out what we have to make automatic, both the good habits and the bad habits, you know, and what we can budget and then what we can save. And then you can sleep well and, and everything starts working out perfectly at that point.

• 30:36Speaker 04

  Well, that's what's beautiful. Once you have a plan in place, it does relieve some of the guilt. You're not like, you're not waiting, oh, am I doing all, no, no, I know a plan. I know where the finish line is. I know where I'm at today. I know the steps I'm taking towards that finish line. If there's anything left over, it's okay if I go buy the $50 shirt, or if we go on the trip, or we go out to eat, or whatever that thing may be. Because you know, you've already taken care of the main things first. You've taken care of the most important things. When you guys like sit down to have these conversations, like when you talk about budgeting or looking at where the money is, how do those go? Do y'all have like a weekly, monthly?

• 31:09Brian Preston?

  Do you do net worth statements and stuff?

• 31:11Speaker 02

  We don't have conversations. I just do it all.

• 31:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's, uh, I've got enough meetings in my life. So having another meeting at home wouldn't be. Everything she's, uh, like, I was a person of very simple means, I would say.

• 31:25Speaker 05

  And like everything she's done for me, or like pushed, and I don't want to say pushed because it sounds aggressive, like coerced me into doing. Has always been like in the long run for my benefit. Doing something like this, for example, like you 15 years ago, not a chance. I roll along because she's just, our life is so good now, like with the kids and like financially where we are, like from where it was even before I met her. And then even where we got started and like all because of her work ethic. And when she gets into something and just dives into it, like this is what it turns into. So if she, like any of those financial drivers, I'm on board. Like I just.

• 32:03Speaker 04

  Do you love doing it alone?

• 32:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:05Speaker 04

  Okay. So you're, you're like, you're like, no, yeah, hey, just let me cook. Let me get in the kitchen. Let me cook.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, basically. Cause I don't want, I don't really want a lot of opinions, you know?

• 32:13Speaker 04

  So when it comes to spending, uh, when you feel like you're, I'm gonna, I'm gonna use travel as an example. Is there pressure from one or the other of you? Like, hey, let's go on this trip. Let's do this thing. Is it more of you like really?

• 32:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:25Speaker 04

  Okay. So you're the one who's, okay.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  I'm the spender and the.

• 32:28Speaker 04

  You're the spender and the saver.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  He spends no money. Buys nothing, spends no money, has a company car. Like this is.

• 32:36Brian Preston?

  Ice coffee, like.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, coffee. He buys coffee and haircut.

• 32:39Brian Preston?

  Five times a week.

• 32:39Speaker 04

  Coffee and a haircut. That's, that is, you know what?

• 32:42Speaker 02

  He's the greatest husband in the world.

• 32:44Speaker 04

  Amazing. Coffee and a haircut.

• 32:45Brian Preston?

  And he can fix everything.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  And he can fix everything.

• 32:48Speaker 04

  Do you think it, so if, if we're able to put together a plan and okay, here's where you are, here's where you guys need to be, here's what that means. Do you think you'll actually, one, if we give you a plan, can you take and execute the plan and stick to it?

• 32:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 32:59Speaker 04

  It's like you have the propensity to do that.

• 33:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, I won't have an issue with it. I, and I think that's what I was encouraged to do this with her. Cause I know she'll listen if you guys say it. So like, if you guys implement it. She trusts your opinion more than anything. So then we'll easily be able to implement it.

• 33:16Speaker 04

  So when we think about, and this is going to be a hard one, but obviously one of the things we're gonna need to figure out, we can talk to you about, okay, what savings we'll do. And we can talk about, okay, well, if you save at this level over the next 10 years, this is where you'll be. Do you have any idea? You know, the way you're living right now, you know, the money you're spending right now, that's somewhere loosely between 13,000 and $17,000 a month. In retirement, when you get to financial independence, what lifestyle, if you had to put a dollar figure in the lifestyle that you want to live, like how much do you think you'll spend? Obviously daycare will be gone, home equity line of credit will be gone. When you think about, man, if we had this much money every month, we could travel the way we want to, and we could eat the way we want to. Have you guys figured out what that number is?

• 33:57Speaker 02

  Uh, 10,000 has been my goal, 10,000 a month. So 120 a year.

• 34:01Brian Preston?

  And come on.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  I know, I do, I think about it. No daycare, no, what?

• 34:07Brian Preston?

  Cause your travel, I bet, I bet y'all are gonna spend, cause when you have more time, you don't think you'll try to travel more?

• 34:13Speaker 02

  We're not like, as far as travel, I'm not like a, let's go international, let's go to Paris, let's do this. Like we love just going to Florida and like looking at the water. We rent Airbnbs.

• 34:22Brian Preston?

  Okay. Are they, are these like one bedrooms? Y'all stack them all up? No, these are, these are nice places, aren't they?

• 34:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:28Brian Preston?

  What are they?

• 34:29Speaker 02

  Like, like three to 5,000 a week.

• 34:31Speaker 04

  Okay, that's not crazy. All right. So, so hold on. So $17,000 spending minus 1,400 for the HELOC. Minus $1,200 for daycare.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:42Speaker 04

  That's at like 14,000, right? And you just said, hey, I think a number that would be great is 10,000. So when we get to retirement, financially, we want to, you know, we want to spend $4,000 less than we're spending today.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:54Speaker 04

  Does that sound right?

• 34:55Brian Preston?

  When you have more time at home.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  No, I know, but like him, it's the kids. I hate to blame it on the kids, but I'm telling you, we walk into Target for like.

• 35:04Brian Preston?

  It's only gonna get worse, by the way.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  For like toilet paper. And we walk out of there $300 later with every chalk and toy and bubble and shirt under the sun for the kids.

• 35:12Speaker 04

  Let's look at the expenses again.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  Like the shopping is 1,100. I bet that's all Target.

• 35:15Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  And Amazon for, we're always getting something for the kids. I like to think that's gonna go down. You know, I guess I don't know.

• 35:22Brian Preston?

  Might be a little hopeful thinking, because they get more expensive the older they get.

• 35:25Speaker 04

  Cause and, and mind you, uh, 10 years from now, when you have a 16 year old and a 14 year old, your insurance is going to change based on that 16 year old. You're gonna have automobiles. You're gonna have two going into college. You gotta figure out like how, are you guys gonna pay for college? Are they gonna pay for college? What's your conversations around that?

• 35:42Speaker 05

  Uh, hopefully by then it'll be free.

• 35:45Speaker 02

  Maybe they don't want to go.

• 35:46Speaker 04

  That is a.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  Maybe they want to do HAC, you know?

• 35:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, he could want to get into trade and I can hire him.

• 35:51Speaker 02

  I took out loans, paid my own college. I, I don't feel the need to give them a full ride. It'd be great if the money was in the, the 529s. I would love to help them. But my hope was that we'd be in a position where we'd have some to give them. And then if they have loans, we could help them if they needed, but I'm hoping to teach them.

• 36:08Speaker 04

  Like, hey, we're gonna save from the 529s and what, what's there is there and anything else you need, you gotta figure out how to do.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we'll help if we can, but you know.

• 36:16Speaker 04

  All right. So I'm gonna write down 10,000. I don't think we're gonna stay with that.

• 36:19Brian Preston?

  No, there's no way that's not, that is, that is a pipe dream.

• 36:22Speaker 04

  That's a great idea, but, um, we might iterate on that.

• 36:26Speaker 05

  Well, also in 10 years, I'm assuming everything's gonna go down and be cheaper.

• 36:29Speaker 04

  That's the way it works. That's generally the way it works. Okay. What other questions do you have for us? What are some other things that we can speak to that might be valuable for you guys?

• 36:39Speaker 02

  Um.

• 36:39Brian Preston?

  Oh, I love it. There's a list.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  There's a list. Okay. So Jamie has, I don't know in that other slide if it's in there, but Jamie has a rollover IRA from his old job. So I guess my question is, should we be rolling that into a new 401k? Should we leave it there?

• 36:53Speaker 04

  So let me tell you why you might consider rolling it in. If we were to look at Jamie's 401k, where's your current 401k with your current company at? Like is it Vanguard?

• 37:01Speaker 02

  Transamerica.

• 37:02Speaker 04

  Transamerica. How are the investment options inside? They have like low cost index funds or all like sub-advised insurance products?

• 37:09Speaker 02

  I think he's in low cost index funds.

• 37:10Speaker 04

  So one of the things you want to do is assess that. Okay. How good are the investment options inside of this? If there's only, you know, four options and they're like super expensive, it may not be compelling to roll that IRA in there, right? That may not make sense, but if there are decent investment options and they're relatively low cost. One of the things that you guys could do is you could roll his old rollover IRA into his 401k. When you do that, it then zeros out his IRA balances and now it opens you guys up to be able to do backdoor Roth contributions. Cause now you make too much money to be able to put money into Roth. It's a great way for you guys to build tax-free dollars over this next 10 years, just by changing your account structure a touch.

• 37:49Brian Preston?

  Yeah, I, I love it. As long as the, you don't skip the due diligence on the investment options on the 401k.

• 37:56Speaker 04

  And you have the, you have an $8,000 rollover IRA. What's that?

• 38:00Speaker 02

  Uh, that was, that was an old 401k that our advisor just.

• 38:03Brian Preston?

  Definitely get rid of that.

• 38:04Speaker 04

  Same, same exact idea. You could roll that into your current 401k.

• 38:08Brian Preston?

  Even if your current 401k is expensive, that's so small.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 38:11Brian Preston?

  That should, the opportunity cost is nil and it'd be much better in the first year for you to be making Roth IRA contributions.

• 38:18Speaker 04

  Is there a reason you have two 401ks currently?

• 38:20Speaker 02

  My, oh, I have an old one also.

• 38:22Speaker 04

  Okay. So even that one, again, assuming that your current plan, low cost options, well diversified. You could consolidate your IRA rollover and your old 401k into that. And you guys really just collapsed five accounts down into two.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:35Speaker 04

  Which is great. It's a lot easier to keep track of your allocation and it opens up some really great tax planning by being able to do backdoor Roth contributions.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  Can you access, um, I don't know, I can't remember this Roth IRA prior to 59 and a half?

• 38:49Speaker 04

  Well, you can access the money that you put in, the contributions you make, uh, not the earnings. Earnings have to be pulled out of, but you really don't want to. Like if you can avoid.

• 38:57Speaker 02

  Well, I know, but this is my problem. If we want to retire early, that's why I feel like I don't want to put anything else in retirement because I need that bridge account.

• 39:04Brian Preston?

  Ultimately, we're gonna want that probably to come out of a brokerage account. That's gonna be your bridge account.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:09Brian Preston?

  I mean, we could look, there's all kinds of fire movements and you've probably seen the blog post, and we actually have a great show coming out, five ways to get access to your retirement assets early. Where we're gonna share the, the Roth, you know, after you do the five year, um, holding periods and so forth, you can get access to Roth. But I'll be honest, it's just because I love the tax-free growth so much, it's usually what I tell people, if you have the ability. I'd much rather you do it out of a taxable brokerage account, because it's just the, the friction cost and the opportunity cost for, against your future self is just so much lower. It is a break.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just have felt like everything should go in the brokerage to get that bridge account.

• 39:47Speaker 04

  I think what we're gonna show is, again, if we're just gonna use 25% as like our, as our, kind of like mark in the sand right now. If you have to save an extra $40,000 a year, well, even if 15,000 of that was going into the Roth, it still leaves 25,000, is that right? 40 minus 15, 25, $25,000 a year going into the brokerage account. So it's not an either or, it's likely going to be a both end. And one of the things that's great, uh, at 46 years old, if retirement for you is 56, and that's when you actually retire. Even though you're not 59 and a half yet, so long as you still have that 401k that we've consolidated the assets in, and you retire in the year that you turn 55.

• 40:25Speaker 04

  You can actually draw those assets. Not saying that you should, or that's what you ought to do, but you actually have access to that without that 10% penalty after age 55. So the age difference in timeline kind of works to your advantage. So I still think Roth is likely gonna make a lot of sense for you guys.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  So as far as the HELOC and the brokerage account, should I be pumping the brakes on the brokerage and nailing the HELOC? Or doing what I'm doing?

• 40:51Speaker 04

  Let us put together a plan on that. Um, uh, because what I want to see is, uh, you look at two things. Okay. What's the finish line that we want to be able to accomplish? What's the most effective way to get to that finish line? There is going to be an opportunity cost if we prioritize paying off the HELOC immediately.

• 41:05Brian Preston?

  You've got competing goals.

• 41:06Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know.

• 41:07Speaker 04

  And so, we want to model it both ways and tell you, okay, if you knock out the HELOC, this is how it changes the finish line timeline. If you move towards the finish line, here's how long you have to deal with the HELOC. And we'll kind of lay out both of those scenarios that you guys can make an informed decision on which one you feel the best about.

• 41:22Brian Preston?

  And there's a third player in the fact that your emergency reserves.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  I know.

• 41:26Brian Preston?

  I'm going to tell you, we've got to get that up.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  Okay, that, I said, they're going to kill us on the cash there.

• 41:29Brian Preston?

  Yeah, I mean, you've got to do that.

• 41:30Speaker 02

  Listen, that 20 grand has been sitting there for five years. I'm just like, why do I want to keep adding to it when I could make money somewhere else?

• 41:37Speaker 04

  You know, I'm with you. I have never, I've never had like, a life-threatening car wreck. And so, I just don't even wear my seatbelt anymore. I don't put it on. I don't need it.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Come on!

• 41:48Speaker 04

  I've not had to use it thus far, so why would I have it?

• 41:52Brian Preston?

  It's just been there forever.

• 41:53Speaker 04

  Right? Like, I just, why would I put my seatbelt on?

• 41:57Speaker 02

  Oh, I hate it. I hate cash.

• 41:59Speaker 05

  That's a bit of a drastic example.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  I said, they're going to yell at us about this cash.

• 42:04Brian Preston?

  It does become a desperate decision when you're out of cash. That's why.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  No, I know.

• 42:07Brian Preston?

  Every time that there's a market downturn, it's so interesting to me that people are out of cash, they lose their job, their real estate's getting crushed, and then we're surprised why, everybody's watching the, which planes are flying into Omaha to talk to Warren Buffett is because he's the only guy smart enough to keep some cash around. And I just want to make sure you guys are also on that smart column, so you just don't have to make desperate decisions. Because there are things outside of your control that can come your way and just devastate you guys. And the closer you get to retirement, the more that that gets scary.

• 42:40Speaker 04

  And one of the questions, you guys, one of the things that is probably the most powerful thing that you have right now is this huge shovel. $400,000 is a lot of income.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:51Speaker 04

  When it comes to pain, is your propensity as a couple to concentrate as much pain as possible into a short period of time, or to stretch it out? Because there's a mechanism of which, if we look at your budget, and you tell me how lean you guys could go if you wanted to get, like militant about it, we could get the home equity line knocked out and the emergency fund funded before the end of this year. Like, if you guys were willing to go through the pain of really cutting back?

• 43:19Speaker 02

  We actually just talked about that. I said to him, when we looked at all this, I went, oh, God. And I said, I think for the next six months, we don't even think about vacation, and we just hammer down.

• 43:30Brian Preston?

  I'll be honest, I think that we're not doing you justice by being too, I think we're being too nice to you.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  Oh, what?

• 43:34Brian Preston?

  I just do. I mean, because I was thinking, I think if Dave Ramsey was here, he'd be like, what do you, what do you mean? You've got to take the kids on all these vacations and all this stuff. I mean, I do, I should harness my inner Dave a little bit. It's because I'm seeing y'all's income, and then I'm seeing you lament that you want to pay off that debt. And I'm like, we're way too nice. Because we're telling Gina and Jamie, you know, we'll figure out a plan, it'll be okay. No, we should be popping y'all around.

• 44:00Speaker 04

  Yell at them, yell at them.

• 44:01Brian Preston?

  No, I'm not good at that. I'm not good at that either.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  You're a nice guy.

• 44:03Brian Preston?

  I know, that's the problem. I'm sitting there going, we are not doing them well. Because y'all should, I mean, I see $400,000, and then, y'all should, y'all should be like, we don't know what to do with our money. We're making so much money right now.

• 44:16Speaker 02

  I know what to do, we just keep going up.

• 44:17Brian Preston?

  It just keeps stacking up in the checking account. How in the world, please help us save or spend this money. But that's not what's happening. You guys are like, we don't know where the money is. And we're like, how are we going to fix this if y'all can't even in yourselves? And you're like, I downloaded Monarch.

• 44:31Speaker 02

  I did, that's where that came from.

• 44:33Brian Preston?

  This thing is magical. No, you need to get serious about paying off all this stuff. Because it's crazy. You have a lot of money. You're rich. But you're rich only on income. You're not rich on your net worth statement yet.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  I know.

• 44:44Brian Preston?

  You're kind of, you're kind of behind on that. I mean, I hate to, because other people go watch this and be like, hey, why is he picking on them? They have, they're millionaires. You're millionaires because of your house. You're not millionaires because of your investments.

• 44:57Speaker 02

  But I also feel like we have not been making, it's not even been a year yet that we've made this.

• 45:00Brian Preston?

  But you're coping with that. You're saying that. And that's, once again, if we did this in the right way, as soon as you got that pay raise, holy cow, we're rich! Money's just stacking, and it's not, you spend it.

• 45:11Speaker 04

  That's a great, that's a great point. Up until a year ago, you guys knew how to live off of a $250,000 income. And, and I bet if, if your kids were here, and we asked them, hey, how was life the last two, you said they're already remembering some of the trips we've gone on. So, life probably felt pretty good at a $250,000 income. You guys know what it's like to live at that level. Where you are right now, if you could go back to that temporarily for a season, do you realize how impactful that could be to your financial life? If you just gave yourself six months, eight months, 12 months, living like you made 250, but actually making 400, and knocking out some of these other goals, then you don't wake up in the middle of the night thinking, holy cow, am I doing the

• 45:53Speaker 04

  right thing? You wake up and say, man, I got the HELOC knocked out.

• 45:57Brian Preston?

  Let's take control.

• 45:57Speaker 04

  I've got my emergency fund covered. We're saving 25%. We feel great. All right. I feel like, I feel good. I feel like we, I feel like we can put together a plan. We get the easy job. The easy job for us is putting together the plan. Hard job for you guys will be actually like, taking it and doing it and putting it into practice.

• 46:12Brian Preston?

  This is, but y'all are, y'all are a couple. Like, if y'all were clients of mine, I'd also want to kind of start massaging to turn y'all into creating checkpoints as a couple to, like, they ain't on that worst statement. So, even though Jamie is like, super husband, who is, you know, handy, and, you know, makes a good income, doesn't spend.

• 46:31Speaker 02

  And handsome.

• 46:32Brian Preston?

  Pull him out of the closet, you pull him out of the closet for when he needs to play dad and husband, but then put him back in the closet because he doesn't spend any money or anything else. I would still like y'all to take a more active position together. Because, look, if we had reversed gender, gender roles on this, I would worry about the power structure of keeping your spouse in the dark on everything. I think Jamie is just so, he doesn't care.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  He doesn't care.

• 46:57Speaker 04

  Things are better because I'm in the.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, he doesn't want to know.

• 46:59Brian Preston?

  I would totally spend some time talking about the power dynamics of that, and why good communication is important for couples. It's just that, right now, I don't, I think y'all got bigger fish to fry.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:09Brian Preston?

  So, but that is, if y'all were ongoing clients of mine, that's something I would want to be working out to empower both of you.

• 47:15Speaker 05

  I honestly think it's, like, coming from you guys, it'll be, any plan, it'll be easy for her to implement, and obviously, easy for me to follow, follow along. You guys will just have to explain to the kids why Disney's canceled this year. Sorry, everybody.

• 47:28Speaker 04

  Mr. Brian ruined our memories, guys.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:30Speaker 04

  So, you know, that's.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  No bippity boppity bleep for you, Jamie.

• 47:32Brian Preston?

  No, y'all hurt us, dude. And let me, let me scare you the other side. If you do too much for your kids.

• 47:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:38Brian Preston?

  They don't come out always perfect on the other side. That's what I worry, because we both grew up with scarcity. It sounds like y'all grew up with scarcity. Raising kids with abundance is its own problem.

• 47:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:49Brian Preston?

  So, that's why you need to be mindful of that, because I think there's a tendency, especially if you grew up in scarcity, when you start coming into money, let's give them more. But if your kid's best life is while they're under your roof.

• 48:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:00Brian Preston?

  What type of adults are they going to be? You have to be just as deliberate with wealth as you do when you grow up in scarcity, is because there's unintended consequences. So, this is not necessarily a bad thing for the kids, for y'all to be super focused on, on getting these goals paid off. And then it also lets you model how to be good and disciplined with your money.

• 48:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:20Speaker 04

  All right. Our homework is we are going to put together a plan. You've laid out for your goal, for us what your goals are. We're going to say, okay, well, here's what would be necessary in order to accomplish those goals. Your homework in the interim, while we're building out this plan, is to figure out, okay, how, how aggressively do we want to attack this?

• 48:37Brian Preston?

  Well, I'm going to, I'm going to steal a line from Uncle Dave, since you said he was the beginning of your journey. You have to live like no one else.

• 48:43Speaker 02

  I know, so you can live like no one else.

• 48:44Brian Preston?

  To live like no one else. You know, this is, this is basic. We pull this stuff back out, you know, after you graduate from Dave, we'll get, eventually get you to.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  I have that already. I read it. I already signed up for the pre-order for the new one.

• 48:55Brian Preston?

  I just don't have the cool saying. So, y'all rock. This was a lot of fun. Thank you for, I feel like we were the tough, tough love, but like, soft addition. So.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  I needed it, you know.

• 49:06Brian Preston?

  But y'all have been great. You really have.

• 49:08Speaker 02

  Thank you. Thank you for having us.

• 49:09Speaker 04

  Thank, yes. Brian, what a great conversation we had with Gina and Jamie.

• 49:13Brian Preston?

  I, I actually love this couple.

• 49:15Speaker 04

  They're wonderful.

• 49:16Brian Preston?

  But I, I will say, they have fallen in the trap that we see so many people make, especially high-income-earning Americans.

• 49:22Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 49:23Brian Preston?

  Is, is, if they've made more and more money, I mean, huge numbers, their lifestyle somehow was keeping pace, if not even exceeding these big jumps.

• 49:32Speaker 04

  But they're not beyond repair, but it's going to take some hard work. If they really want to change their financial outcome, and really their financial future, they're going to have to make some hard decisions. And so, we sat down, and we said, okay, let's think about how do we prioritize what they're doing right now? Should we prioritize paying off the home equity line of credit, which is at 6.75? Is that high interest? Do we prioritize building up the emergency fund? And there was a little bit of tension as we were kind of navigating that.

• 49:59Brian Preston?

  Well, I mean, look, 6.75 stinks. However, to have this level of income and not be able to cover an emergency for desperate decisions that might come your way from the uncertainty, it gets scary. So, I think we, we ended up, after talking about, we landed on, let's at least get them to a moderate level of emergency reserves.

• 50:18Speaker 04

  That's what we said. We said, okay, based on their current spend, which they told us was right around $13,500, they should have about a $40,000 emergency fund.

• 50:26Brian Preston?

  And that at least gets them three months.

• 50:28Speaker 04

  That gets them three months. But what we want to do then is, okay, that's their base level spend, how are we going to make some adjustments? Because they have to find some margin to be able to do this. So, we said, okay, there are some spending areas that have gotten a little bit frothy. If we can shrink those down, it'll create some margins. We said, okay, for their dining out, let's drop that from almost $1,100 a month down to 750. Shopping, let's drop that from almost 1,200 down to 500. The loan repayment, we're going to drop that down from the 1,865 they're doing down to 500. And this one, I think, is going to feel painful in the moment, but. Necessary, their travel budget, which was big, was $2,700 a month. We're going to drop that down to $1,000 a month. We go from 13.5 in spending down to about $9,400.

• 51:13Brian Preston?

  So, think about this. We have found for them $4,000 a month.

• 51:19Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 51:19Brian Preston?

  I mean, we're talking like 50 grand a year.

• 51:21Speaker 04

  Big.

• 51:21Brian Preston?

  And, and what was wild to me is over 2,700 of that 4,000 plus a month is from just consumption.

• 51:30Speaker 04

  Consumption.

• 51:30Brian Preston?

  I mean, and with a lion's share of it, probably just on, I mean, well, it is, it's not probably. The travel alone, yeah, there was a lot of fluff in this system that I'm glad that we're able to kind of, now, look, we're not trying to steal all their future happiness, but this is definitely something they need to get serious from a discipline standpoint, so they can actually have the money and be wealthy versus just looking rich.

• 51:51Speaker 04

  And so what we said is based on what we assume their like net take home to be with this cutting, it shaped their total margin to around $6,500 a month in total margin they have to deploy towards goals. And right now, we want that to go towards the emergency fund. And if they do that, after three months, they will get their cash up to almost $45,000, just doing it for three months. So like, if they can put their minds to this and make the hard decision, they can start knocking out their goals pretty quickly.

• 52:18Brian Preston?

  Well, I think that, you know, and if you, if you're like, are we being too hard on them? This is a couple that only recently started making an income over $400,000.

• 52:26Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 52:26Brian Preston?

  It doesn't seem unfair or unrealistic to say, no, just go live like you did back when you made a quarter of a million dollars. So I think this is completely reasonable from a planning standpoint.

• 52:36Speaker 04

  And then what we said is, okay, if we can get their emergency fund built up, now we want to increase their savings rate. And even though 25% is our goal, we said, let's not even try to go all the way to 25%. If we can just go from their current 15% savings rate up to a 20% savings rate, it's going to make a really big difference because they said, hey, we really have this goal of retiring on this 10-year timeline. Well, that's, that's sort of fire-ish, and so in order to get there, again, they're going to have to be making some like difficult but heavy discipline decisions.

• 53:08Brian Preston?

  They have conflicting goals. I mean, because look, their retirement goal is less than like 10 years.

• 53:12Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 53:13Brian Preston?

  So to, yes, let's pay off the debt, but somehow we have to be building assets. I think that's why it is a nice land in the middle. Let's get them to 20%. That's still a somewhat aggressive savings rate, but it allows them to keep nibbling and knocking down that home equity line.

• 53:26Speaker 04

  So if they consolidate some of their retirement accounts, like we said, when we think about their savings priority, we think that they should both max out their 401ks, that's 24.5 each. They can now do backdoor ROFs if they, again, clean up their, their IRA situation. They can max out their HSA, and they're still able to build some dollars in an after-tax account. As I said, they want to do that bridge money, that'd be about $800 a month. So even saving 20%, it's not 25, that's still $82,000 a year. And that, that is a lot of money, but at their income, I'd argue that's necessary. That's what they ought to be doing.

• 53:59Brian Preston?

  Well, and it's only for a moment that they get to kind of get this exception to the rule because, look, we're going to pay off this home equity line. It's going to knock it out in less than 19 months. I mean, right around the 18-month mark, they're going to be completely out of that home equity.

• 54:13Speaker 04

  That's right. What we said is we're going to cut their spending pretty aggressively. We're going to fund the emergency fund, and then we're going to get their savings rate from 15% to 20%. And with the additional they had cut, that's going to go towards a home equity line. We're going to pay 500 a month for three months, and then we're going to aggressively knock that down at $4,000 a month over the next almost two years.

• 54:33Brian Preston?

  Well, remember, the biggest consumption decision we knocked down was their travel.

• 54:37Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 54:37Brian Preston?

  But I don't, really don't think we're traumatizing anybody by taking an 18-month pause to get this thing back in order.

• 54:44Speaker 04

  Not at all. And I think if they can, if they can make some of these difficult decisions, what it's going to do is going to put them in a position to have a higher probability of success getting to where they want to be. Because we said, okay, based on where they are now, if they can just continue saving at that 20%, that $82,000 a year, and based on their age, if we just assume an 8% rate of return on average, by the time Jamie gets to 56 years old, they'll have built a portfolio of about $2.5 million. Now, Gina said, we really want to spend 10 grand a month. And I don't even know if that number is accurate or not, but even if that were the goal, based on just saving 20%, it does not quite get them there by the time that the 10 years runs out.

• 55:29Brian Preston?

  But come on, we, we actually have a get out of jail card here is because Gina, her job doesn't have to end.

• 55:37Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 55:37Brian Preston?

  She's already said that she can pretty much work from anywhere. She can work just as much or as little as she wants as a nurse practitioner. So her job is in demand, and she actually likes going to work. So I see that we have a, an easy button here is that we can allow her to keep working a bit, even if her husband kind of drops out of the workforce.

• 55:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, what we said is if she can just cover the bills, if she can just allow them to meet their living expenses, and they can let that money they build up over the next 10 years coast, this is sort of a version of coast-fi, coast until Jamie gets to age 66, well, then that $2.5 million turns into almost 5.7. Well, a $5.7 million portfolio at that time with Jamie being 66 and Gina being 60 would generate the $10,000 a month they're looking for. So this is certainly a possibility that they could move towards.

• 56:32Brian Preston?

  That's option one.

• 56:33Speaker 04

  That's option one.

• 56:33Brian Preston?

  There is another option. If they don't like this, and they don't like kind of the coast fire that you just laid out, we could have where they just got really serious about the saving and investing, and then allowed that to build up the assets as well. So lay out that scenario.

• 56:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, once they get the HELOC paid off, instead of leaving their savings rate at 20%, and having some of that excess go to lifestyle, they said, you know what? We've cut down, we want to be really devoted to this. We're going to have all $4,000 of that margin go towards our future financial well-being. So now, instead of saving 20%, we're actually saving almost 32%.

• 57:07Brian Preston?

  That's a big change.

• 57:08Speaker 04

  Now, in the next 10 years, we get to a portfolio of $3.3 million. And again, if she can just cover the living expenses, let that coast a little bit, they would only have to make it until Jamie hits age 60 and Gina hits age 54. So now, we've knocked six years off their timeline if they can make the hard decisions now.

• 57:27Brian Preston?

  So that, that sounds more like a true fire setup at that point. So it's almost a choose your own adventure. How hard do you want to hit the lifestyle adjustments so that they can leave the workforce on their terms?

• 57:38Speaker 04

  What they got to, what they have to do is they have to sit down and prioritize their goals. They're going, if they want their future to look different than their present, then they're going to have to make some hard decisions. And they get to choose how hard do they want to make it? If they want to make it really hard, it'll be a lot shorter. If they want it to be not as painful, they have to be, commit to it for a little bit longer. But they're in the driver's seat. They have a big shovel. They can change their circumstances, but it's going to take discipline.

• 58:01Brian Preston?

  Yeah, hopefully some of this, because if you remember, Gina was somewhat stressed out about her finances. Jamie was completely kind of tapped out on any of the decision-making. I'm hoping from us having this discussion, it's at least going to be a catalyst that brings peace of mind for Gina, and then hopefully Jamie now feels like he's more of an active participant, and they get to live their best life.

• 58:20Speaker 04

  That's right. It's, they are a couple that can be successful, but it's going to require discipline. If you're a couple like Jamie and Gina, and you'd like to be a guest on Making a Millionaire, you can go to moneyguy.com slash apply. Or if you want to check out any of our free tools and calculators, you can go to moneyguy.com slash resources.

• 58:37Brian Preston?

  Gina, Jamie, thank you for coming on. We really had a blast with you. And I think that you were one of those couples that just a little bit of discipline in this moment in time is going to create huge results for your future, and we just wish you the best. I'm your host, Brian, joined by Mr. Bo, Money Guy team, out.

• 58:56Speaker 06

  The Money Guy Show is hosted by Brian Preston and Bo Hanson. Brian and Bo are partners with 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.

• 59:40Speaker 06

  Stonefire naan is made with real buttermilk and ghee. It's the perfect flatbread for any occasion. I put out Stonefire naan with dips at every dinner party. I make naan grilled cheese when my daughter has friends over.

• 59:51Brian Preston?

  I use Stonefire naan to reward the humans who do my bidding. Right. It's perfect for camping trips. Dance for it, feeble mortal. Sorry, is he talking to me or? Dance. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. From our tradition to yours, Stonefire. Together we naan.

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