Fastest Way to $1 Million, Roth Rules, and If You Should Rent Forever (Money Q&A)

In this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast Money Q&A, we are going to talk about  the fastest Way to 1 million Roth Rules, and should you rent forever. Watch this episode on Youtube Today we are going to answer these questions! Question 1: How do I build back my emergency fund after using it, and where should I move money from to do this? Question 2: Is it wise to invest my HSA funds? Question 3: I’ve come across an extra $500/month. Should I put it toward credit card debt or savings? Question 4: Should I roll my rollover IRA back into my new 401(k) plan now that I’ve started a new job? Question 5: How do I become a millionaire in a rapid-fire way? Question 6: As a 28-year-old in a high cost of living area, would I be better off renting forever and investing the difference instead of owning? Question 7: If I make over $150K/year, should I stop investing in Roth accounts for my IRA and 401(k)? Question 8: Should I still move my money from my Roth 401(k) to a Roth IRA, or are they essentially the same thing? Question 9: My mortgage rate is 6.625%. You always say over 6% is high-interest debt—should I pay it off early? Question 10: Have you heard of the AIQ ETF? What are your thoughts on it? How Andrew Can Help You: Listen to The Business Show here. Don't let another year pass by without making significant strides toward your dreams. "Master Your Money Goals" is your pathway to a future where your aspirations are not just wishes but realities. Enroll now and make this year count! Join The Master Money Newsletter where you will become smarter with your money in 5 minutes or less per week Here! Learn to invest by joining Index Fund Pro! This is Andrew’s course teaching you how to invest! Watch The Master Money Youtube Channel! , Ask Andrew a question on Instagram or TikTok. Learn how to get out of Debt by joining our Free Course Leave Feedback or Episode Requests here. Car buying Calculator here Thanks to Our Amazing Sponsors for supporting The Personal Finance Podcast. Shopify: Shopify makes it so easy to sell. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/pfp Chime: Start your credit journey with Chime. Sign-up takes only two minutes and doesn’t affect your credit score. Get started at chime.com/ Thanks to Fundrise for Sponsoring the show! Invest in real estate going to fundrise.com/pfp Thanks to Policy Genius for Sponsoring the show! Go to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quote. Go to https://joindeleteme.com/PFP20/ for 20% off! Indeed: Start hiring NOW with a SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to upgrade your job post at Indeed.com/personalfinance Turn your business dream into reality! Apply now at www.oneday.org/pfp Go to Acorns.com/pfp and start automating your investments and get a $5 bonus today! Shop Data Plans and Save Big at mintmobile.com/pfp Links Mentioned in This Episode: The Ultimate Guide to the HSA (The Super Retirement Account!) Connect With Andrew on Social Media: Instagram TikTok Twitter Master Money Website Master Money Youtube Channel Free Guides: The Stairway to Wealth: The Order of Operations for your Money How to Negotiate Your Salary The 75 Day Money Challenge Get out Of Debt Fast Take the Money Personality Quiz 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.

• 0:00Andrew Giancola?

  Longtime listeners know, one of the best ways to build wealth is to increase your income. And one way to do that is by starting a side hustle. And that's one reason why I absolutely love Whatnot. Now, my son and I, we love collecting sports cards. And we've used Whatnot to buy and sell cards. It's been a really fun way to enjoy something we love together. Now, Whatnot is a live shopping platform where people sell everything from sports cards to clothing, electronics, and collectibles. And what's really cool about it is you can turn something you're passionate about into a business. And you could do it right from your phone. You don't even need a storefront or a website. So whether you're looking to make some extra money or find great deals on your next shopping trip, check out Whatnot.

• 0:44Andrew Giancola?

  Search Whatnot, that's W H A T N O T, in the App Store. Download and start selling right away. When I started the Personal Finance Podcast, I had no idea how big it could become. I just knew I had something I wanted to share, so I started putting it online. And looking back, I definitely wish I would have started a decade earlier. One of the horror parts about building something online, though, is making it look professional. A website used to mean hiring a developer, figuring out design, and potentially spending thousands of dollars. In fact, on my website, I spent tens of thousands of dollars. That's what impressed me when playing around with Hostinger's AI website builder.

• 1:27Andrew Giancola?

  I told it what kind of website I wanted, and I built the first version in minutes. No coding, no designer or developer needed. And Hostinger doesn't stop at launch. Their AI can help with SEO, website copy, email marketing, and more. Plus, your domain, website, email, and marketing can all live in one account, with plans starting at just $3 every single month. Hostinger builds your vision step by step. Create your website today. Go to hostinger.com/pfp and use code PFP for 10% off now. On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, the fastest way to 1 million, Roth rules, and should you rent forever?

• 2:27Andrew Giancola?

  What's up everybody and welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew, founder of MasterMoney.co. And today on the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to be going through your questions on this money Q and A. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join the Master Money newsletter by going to MasterMoney.co/newsletter. And don't forget to follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or whatever your favorite podcast player is. And if you're getting value out of this show, consider leaving a five-star rating review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and give us the old thumbs up. All right, today, we're going to be diving into a bunch of your questions. Now, I've had a ton of questions

• 3:10Andrew Giancola?

  coming in as of late, and so I'm going to try to answer more of your questions, and we'll try to pick up the pace a little bit. Sometimes I draw these out a little, and so we'll try to pick up the pace on some of these questions. But I have 10 questions to answer today for you guys. The first one is going to be, how do I build back up my emergency fund after using it? And where should I move money to do this? Question two is, is it wise to invest my HSA funds? Then, the third question is, I've come across an extra $500 a month, and we're going to talk about what to do with it. Question four is, should I roll over my IRA back into my new 401k plan? Question five is, how do I become a millionaire in a rapid-fire way? I'm going to give you the quick, dirty answer to that one. Then, we have a 28-year-old living in a high-cost of living area, and would they be better off renting forever and investing the difference

• 3:55Andrew Giancola?

  instead of owning? Great question. That almost needs to be a whole episode. Question seven is, if I make over $150,000 a year, should I stop investing in Roth accounts? Eight is, should I move money from my Roth 401k to Roth IRA? Or are they essentially the same thing? Nine is, my mortgage rate is 6.625%. Do I need to pay that off as fast as I possibly can? And the last one is a specific question on a ETF. So, this is an action-packed episode. We are going to have a ton and ton of meat on the bones in this episode. So, really, really excited for you guys to join me. So, without further ado, let's get into it.

• 4:34Andrew Giancola?

  All right. The first question is, how do I build back up my emergency fund after using it? And where do I move the money from to do this? So the way that this works is we utilize something called the 136 method. And if you have not heard our episode talking about the 136 method, I highly encourage you to go back and take a look at that because the 136 method was maybe one of our most popular episodes of last year. I know it was our most popular episode on YouTube last year for sure. And it was one of our most popular on audio as well. Now, the way that the 136 method works is that first you are going to try to save up one month of expenses. This is one of your biggest number one goals that I want you to do is get to that one month expense range where you have one month of expenses saved up in a high yield savings account. Okay.

• 5:18Andrew Giancola?

  Once you have one month of expenses, you're going to look and say, hey, do I have high interest debt that I need to pay off? Anything above a 6% interest rate outside of your mortgage? If you do, then you need to focus on paying off that debt first. Okay. Once that debt is paid off, then you go to three months of expenses. So you're starting to save in your emergency fund up to three months of expenses. Once you have three months of expenses in your emergency fund, that is when you begin investing. And so you start to invest and then in addition, you can take extra dollars and put them towards your emergency fund with the ultimate goal of trying to get to six months of expenses. Okay. So that's the aura that we talked about with the 136 method. That is the simplest way to put it. The bird's eye view, we go into a lot more details on scenarios and things like that in the episode. Okay. So once you have that set up, the beautiful thing about the 136 method is if you have

• 6:02Andrew Giancola?

  to use your emergency fund, let's say, for example, you lose your job. And so if you lose your job and you go all the way back to just only having one month of expenses in your emergency fund, you had to use up five months in order to go find another job. Well, if that happened, then you're going to go and repeat the cycle all over again. Well, I only have one month in my emergency fund. Do I have high interest debt paid off? Yes, it is paid off, so I'm going to build it back up to three months. And so you're going to allocate all your dollars to building it up towards three months of expenses. And then, once you have those three months of expenses saved up, then you can get back to investing again. So you pause investing all the way up to three months. Then you get back to three months and you start to invest your dollars again. And this is a powerful way to think about this because your emergency fund is going to need to be used at some point in your life. That is What it is there for emergencies happen, you are going to have to use it.

• 6:47Andrew Giancola?

  But you just repeat the cycle each and every single time in order to build up that emergency fund back to six months. Now, if you're uncomfortable with the idea of pausing investing, what I would highly recommend is potentially building your emergency fund up a little bit further than that six month mark. And the reason for that is it gives you a little extra cushion so you don't ever have to pause investing if you don't want to. So you can go to seven months, you can go to eight months, you can go to nine months. If you feel like that is something that you need to do because you do not want to pause investing. But that is what I love about the 136 method is it just cycles back again. Now, where do you keep this money? I keep it in a high yield savings account. You can also put it in a money market fund. You can put it in a T bill ladder if you want to.

• 7:29Andrew Giancola?

  You could put it in CDs if they're flexible, but all of these are different places that I would highly recommend you look into. The reason why I keep it in a high yield savings account is the rate is good enough and it's a lot easier to manage than something like a T bill or a CD ladder. So I would definitely recommend looking at the high yield savings account. That is my favorite place to put it. And if you're going to do something like a CD, make sure it's a no penalty CD in case you need to use the money. And so that is what I would do is you just repeat the process. That's how the 136 method works. It just works in a cycle and every time you use money, you just follow and go back to either one, three, or six, whatever marker that you are on.

• 8:05Andrew Giancola?

  The next question is, is it wise to invest HSA funds? So the biggest thing with the HSA, and we just had an episode that came out on the HSA. I think it came out after this question was sent in to us, but it is absolutely what I want you to do with an HSA if you are utilizing an HSA for retirement. So most people think of an HSA as something that they are using for medical expenses. And if you're using it for your medical expenses, that is a different story. But the way that we use it here at Master Money is we talk about utilizing your HSA as an additional retirement account. Why? Because then HSA has triple tax benefits. It has pre-tax benefits and the cool thing about this is you get that tax free growth and over time, these HSAs can grow very large. And what I want you to note here is that that qualified medical expense, when you

• 8:48Andrew Giancola?

  have to reimburse yourself for a qualified medical expense, that can be something that could be When you're 20, if you break your arm and you had to go to the doctor and you have all these medical expenses from breaking your arm, you could reimburse yourself in your 60s if you want to from breaking your arm in your 20s. And so there is no timeline on when that qualified medical expense has to happen. But there is a laundry list of what is a qualified medical expense now. And if you even go on Amazon, you can see all the products that are HSA certified. I love doing this now because you can see all the various things that would qualify as an HSA item that you can utilize as a qualified medical expense. So you can actually build up and bulk up some of these qualified medical expenses, even for like personal care items

• 9:29Andrew Giancola?

  or items that you use every single day. And so I like to invest my HSA like a retirement account if you don't need the money now. If you're not going to need the money right now for medical expenses, and most people who build wealth will not need it. So the way that it would work is you just pay for your medical expenses out of pocket, and you would use your HSA as that retirement account and let it grow and build up now. And then you're investing those dollars for your future. So that's how I would look at my HSA is I would invest those funds. And just make sure you look at what kind of funds are inside of your HSA. Some of them have really high fee funds. That's why I like Fidelity. Fidelity is a great option because it does have really good investment funds in it. The third question is, I've come across an extra $500 per month. Do I put it towards

• 10:09Andrew Giancola?

  credit cards or savings? Now, if you have high interest debt, so typically any debt above a 6% to 7% interest rate, we always want you to pay that off first before you start to save your dollars towards something else. So again, we're going to repeat the 136 method again, because you need to save up at least one month of expenses in your emergency fund, because that's going to protect you while you're starting to pay down debt. But if you have this extra $500 per month, then once you have your emergency fund saved up, it's time to start deploying that capital, at least one month, towards your credit cards. Because credit cards are always, always, always high interest debt. I have yet to come across a situation where they're not. And so typically, they range from 18% interest all the way up

• 10:49Andrew Giancola?

  to, I've seen them as high as 40% interest. And so this is something where it is a pants-on-fire emergency if you have credit card debt, specifically when it comes to your financial situation. And so in that scenario, you want to take that extra 500 and start paying down That debt as fast as you possibly can. Now, any debt above a 6% interest rate outside of your mortgage is something you definitely want to start to get paid down. Because here's why, if you invest those dollars, let's say you got an average rate of return of 7% in the market. And if you invested those dollars into the market with an average rate of return of 7%, you're going to be much better off paying off that debt, you're going to get a higher rate of return on those dollars. Then you would if you invested them, or even worse, if you save them, because if you saved those dollars, inside of something like a savings account, you're going to get 2, 3, 4% if it's in a high-yield savings account.

• 11:34Andrew Giancola?

  If it's at a traditional bank, you're going to get literally nothing on it. So this is where you need to make sure that you are paying off that debt first. It is the highest use for those dollars is any high-interest debt needs to be wiped out. I don't want you carrying credit card debt. Credit cards can absolutely destroy your finances, especially if you let that balance grow. It's compound interest working against you instead of for you, and so you have to make sure that you get rid of that as fast as you possibly can. Listen, one of the biggest threats to our finances right now is there is a ton of data breaches going on. And that is why I love this service called Delete Me. Delete Me is a service that removes your personal information from these things called data brokers. And what data brokers do is they collect your personal information and they sell them off to different companies, or even scammers in the worst-case scenario.

• 12:18Andrew Giancola?

  And so these data brokers will have your name, maybe they'll have their address, maybe they'll have some other pieces of your personal information. And they are selling this information to other people who are looking for it. And so the key thing with Delete Me is they will remove your personal information from these data brokers. And I tried to remove my personal information early on from these data brokers myself, and it took me hours and hours and hours. Well, Delete Me can do it for you. Now, why is this so important for your financial situation? Because if someone gets a piece or a hold of your personal information, and they try to go open a credit card, or a student loan in your name, or a bank loan in your name, guess what? If they can get the rest of your information, then you have yourself a problem. So you need to make sure you get that information removed from the internet.

• 13:00Andrew Giancola?

  Go out there right now, Google your name, Google your address, Google your phone number in quotations, and watch what pops up. You're going to see all this information that has your personal information. You want to get that removed, and Delete Me helps you do that. So if you go to joindelete.me.com com slash PFP 20 there you'll get 20% off of one of my favorite services out there I truly truly believe in it that is why we've worked with Delete Me for so long because they are just such an amazing service so again go to join delete me.com slash PFP 20 all right the next question is should I roll my rollover IRA back into my 401k plan I got a new job with a new 401k so the only time you would consider rolling in to your 401k is if your new 401k has great low

• 13:41Andrew Giancola?

  cost investment options that you do not currently have access to because what a lot of people think out there is that they think compound interest is linear meaning they think that if they combine all their money into one account it's going to grow faster that is not the case that is not how compounded it just works you can have it in separate accounts it will not grow faster if it is all combined into one account okay and so what you need to realize is that if it is in one spot if you have a rollover IRA say at Vanguard for example and then you open a new 401k it is okay to keep those two separate you can just keep investing at Vanguard and then your new 401k if you like those investment options you continue on with your new 401k but to me it's too much work to try to roll it back over into your new 401k I would just rather have the two separate accounts

• 14:24Andrew Giancola?

  specifically the other cool part is when you have a rollover IRA you get to choose those investment options whereas a 401k you're kind of at the mercy of your employer and what investment options they are providing to you but with a rollover you can actually have some additional investment options so me for example when I left the corporate world I have I put my 401k into a rollover IRA at Vanguard and now I've just had it invested in Vanguard index funds for the last few years and so it's been something that has been really beneficial for me over the course of the long run and in addition and I have my companies I have my own 401k in my companies as well that is just separate from that rollover IRA so for me specifically I would just keep it separate just because the hassle of having to roll it back in there's no need to kind of combine those funds it won't grow faster so you don't have to worry about that number five how do I

• 15:09Andrew Giancola?

  become a millionaire in a rapid fire way so I'm going to give you some things that you can do right now if you have a day job or if you have a W2 job but in a rapid fire way the number one thing and most millionaires if you go read the data about millionaires especially high level high wealth millionaires They made a lot of their money fast by owning businesses. Businesses are the fast track to becoming a millionaire. Now, there's a caveat to this because when it comes to owning businesses, you have to have very specific skills in order to be able to run that business properly. You need to learn how to hire people correctly. You need to be, figure out actually how to run a business and how to run it in a way that is profitable. So you need to have, learn a skill that is going to become profitable. Three, you need to learn how to delegate to others to scale that business pretty quickly.

• 15:52Andrew Giancola?

  Four is you need to learn skills like sales that are going to help you actually perform well within that business. And so there's a lot of different skills that you have to have. If you don't have those skills yet, I would highly recommend you go and acquire those skills first before starting a business. Which brings me to my second point is that if you want to get wealthy really quickly, find high demand skills. Now, these may not be skills that you are truly passionate about. These may not be skills that you truly want to be doing all the time. But if you can find skills that are in high demand that will pay a lot of money, you can become very wealthy very quickly because those skills cannot be taken away from you. Money can be taken away from you from a bunch of different things. But those skills will never be taken away from you, which is why it is one of the best places to invest your dollars is in those high value skills.

• 16:35Andrew Giancola?

  But here are some other quick rules that I'll give you to become a millionaire faster, especially if you're just looking to take the traditional job route. Is saving at least 20 to 30% of your income is going to be the number one thing. Your savings rate is a true indicator, especially if you're starting from zero, on how fast you will become wealthy. Because if you can increase that savings rate over time, you will drastically increase the pace of compound interest and you will drastically start pushing that snowball downhill even faster so that your nest egg continues to grow more and more and more. And this is the power of compound interest. The more fuel that you put towards that fire, the faster that fire will grow. Secondly, is I want you to automate everything that you possibly can. Automate your investments, automate your savings so that you remove willpower from the equation.

• 17:18Andrew Giancola?

  Studies have shown that people who automate their money are much more likely to become millionaires than those that who do not. Three is you need to eliminate all high interest debt if you have not already. And this is going to be one that's really important. But four, this is the most important of them all. And I'll tell you that Right now, and that's the fourth one. This is the most important of all is to increase your income. Income by far is the number one indicator that is going to tell you how fast you can become a millionaire. Because as you start to increase your income, you can also increase that savings rate. And the more that you shovel, the more coals that you shovel into a fire, it's going to grow faster and faster and faster. The same thing works with your income. If you are someone who has a large pile of income that you can start to shovel into investments.

• 18:03Andrew Giancola?

  So they start to compound over time, you're going to become wealthy very, very quickly. So getting that new job or starting that side hustle or starting to skill stack are going to be the number one things that you absolutely must do in order to build wealth. Your income is the number one factor. Continue to remind yourself of that. And then what you do with that income is going to be the most important factor overall as time goes on. Five is to live below your means. So if you are working on increasing your income, your income isn't high enough yet. You can cut back some of your expenses. I don't love telling people to cut back their expenses always because your income is so much more important than cutting back your expenses. But at the beginning, you're going to need to cut back your expenses in order to get there. Now, if you're trying to say, well, should I be investing in day trading? Should I be investing in crypto? No, I would focus on low cost index funds, ETFs.

• 18:48Andrew Giancola?

  Over time, those have been proven to be the way to get wealthy. Also, making sure that you avoid things like lifestyle creep. And lifestyle creep is very normal and is something that is going to be a normal part of your life. But having lifestyle creep take over your entire increase in income is going to be the biggest problem. So you got to make sure that you understand what to do with your money, when you make more money. And lifestyle creep is the number one thing to watch out for. And then maxing out tax advantage accounts are really important. So when you start to take advantage of tax advantage accounts, you are saving a lot more A on taxes. But B, in the long run, you are really setting yourself up for success to be able to retire. So looking at things like the Roth IRA or the 401k or what we just talked about earlier, which is the HSA. Tax advantage accounts are going to be in your favor. Nine is to track your net worth.

• 19:33Andrew Giancola?

  That is the scorecard to getting to a million dollars, obviously. And so your assets minus your liabilities equal your net worth. And tracking that every single quarter is going to help you stay on the ball. It's going to keep you. Motivated, it's going to allow you to see, hey, here's the scoreboard. I want to continue to see this ticking up over time. And then stay invested for the long haul. Listen, getting rich is not a quick thing. It is something that most people who get rich do it over the long term. And every single study of folks who get rich really, really quickly, a lot of them also lose their money pretty quickly. And so you want to make sure that you understand how to manage money, how to handle money as you start to build wealth. That is the best way to make sure that you're going to earn this money, but also keep it and stay consistent over time. And so those are some of the quick recommendations that I can give you. But that is something we could also dive deeper on in a future episode.

• 20:18Andrew Giancola?

  My relationship with money has changed a lot over the years. Early on, I thought building wealth was about making more money. Now I know it's really about having clarity. When you know exactly where your money is going and whether you're on track, you make better decisions. That's one of the reasons I love Monarch. It's the personal finance app that tracks everything from your accounts and investments to your savings, goals and spending. So you can see your entire financial picture in one place. One habit that's made a huge difference for me is my five minute drill every single morning. I open Monarch, check my spending, investments, cash flow and net worth, and I'm done in just a few minutes. It gives me confidence that nothing is slipping through the cracks. I also love the AI weekly recap because it'll flag spending changes,

• 21:03Andrew Giancola?

  upcoming expenses or shifts in my net worth before they become a problem. Instead of reacting after the fact, I can make adjustments early. It really feels like having a financial advisor in your pocket. Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code PFP at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code PFP. It's kind of amazing how much can change in just a single year. Every summer, the kids are a little bigger, a little more independent, and life looks a little different than it did the year before. And it reminds me that while we can't predict the future, we can prepare for it.

• 21:46Andrew Giancola?

  That's one of the reasons I like Policy Genius. See, Policy Genius isn't an insurance company. They're an online marketplace. That lets you compare life insurance quotes from some of America's top insurers side by side for free. And their licensed team helps you compare coverage, prices and terms, answers your questions and even handles the paperwork so you can get the right policy without the hassle. For me, having life insurance isn't about expecting something to happen. It's about knowing my family is protected so I can actually enjoy these moments together instead of worrying about what comes next. And with Policy Genius, you can find 20-year life insurance policies starting at just $276 a year for $1 million of coverage.

• 22:29Andrew Giancola?

  Head to policygenius.com to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you can save. That's policygenius.com. If you've been listening to this show for a while, you know it's not just me anymore. It takes a great team behind the scenes to make everything happen. And if I had to hire someone tomorrow, I'd want someone who could jump right in and make an impact. That's why I'd use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. When workplace chaos hits, Indeed Sponsored Jobs helps you reach qualified candidates faster. Your job gets boosted in search results, so you're spending less time searching and more time interviewing the right people. Plus, you only pay for results, which I absolutely love. Sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95%

• 23:13Andrew Giancola?

  more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored posts. That's a huge advantage when you're trying to grow your business. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all of your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is the job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

• 23:57Speaker 01

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• 24:14Speaker 01

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• 24:26Andrew Giancola?

  Right, the next question, number six, is I am 28 and I live in a high cost of living area. Should I rent forever and invest the difference? So this is a loaded question, a very good question and can be an entire episode if we wanted it to be. But I'm going to give you the quickest possible answer I can on this, okay? So when it comes to figuring out if you should buy a house in a high cost of living area, there's a couple of factors you need to note. And number one, for every single person, before you buy a house, you must, must, must run the numbers before you buy a house. If you do not run the numbers before you buy a house, and most people don't, every realtor should be telling you to do this before you buy a house. Obviously, it's not in their best interest to do this, but I want what is best for you. And so you need to make sure that you are running the numbers. What do I mean by that?

• 25:11Andrew Giancola?

  You need to understand the total cost of ownership of owning a home. What most people do is they think buying a house is the best decision they ever made. And the reason for that is because their parents and their grandparents and their great grandparents have told this to them from generation to generation to generation. And then their friends' parents and grandparents and great grandparents have also said the same thing. So everybody around them thinks the same exact thing, that buying a house is much, much better than renting a house. And the real answer to that question is it depends. You must run the numbers before you figure out if you should buy a house. At the time of recording this, most people should most likely not be buying a house. It might be cheaper to rent than it actually is to buy. Now, the sad part and the sad reality for a lot of people

• 25:56Andrew Giancola?

  is that most families build the majority of their net worth within their personal residence. And this is because people don't know how to manage money. They don't know how to invest. They don't listen to the personal finance podcast like you guys do. And so they don't understand this concept that a lot of them and a lot of their family members have just stored up a lot of their value and net worth within their personal residence, so they think it's a great investment. The reality is, if you look at the statistics and the data, homes appreciate on average about 3% every single year. You get more in a high-yield savings. than that, you can definitely get more by investing in the market than that historically. And so we want to make sure that we understand how to run the numbers. Now, what do I mean by that? When you buy a house, there's going to be a ton of different closing costs that come into play. And so you got to make sure you factor those in. Secondly, though, is when you're owning a home,

• 26:40Andrew Giancola?

  you have to factor in a number of different things. First is capital expenditures, the cost of the roof every 20 years. The cost of the AC or heating going out, the cost of the plumbing having an issue, the cost of your water heater going out, the big capital expenditures that don't happen every year, but they happen every so often. And seemingly, you're going to have to paint your house. You're going to have to maintain some of this stuff. And when you have to do that, that's going to cost you money and it's going to cost you money out of pocket. Secondarily, you're paying taxes. Now, the argument with taxes, and I can see how this is an argument, is that well, if you're renting, you're paying your landlord's taxes anyway, because that's part of his business is to make sure you're paying taxes. Yes, that is the case, but you got to make sure that you're factoring in taxes. You also, because you're going to be paying those forever. You also need to make sure that you are factoring in maintenance.

• 27:25Andrew Giancola?

  Maintenance is a massive one that most people don't understand how much this actually costs. So things like your landscaping, if you have a pool, do you have to maintain that pool? If you have people cleaning your house, that maintenance, or just small different items. If your toilet goes out and you got to go to Home Depot and buy, you know, a whole new inside to the back of the toilet, that could be one thing. Every time you have to go out and replace light bulbs, or every time you have to go out and put new window dressings on, or when you want to remodel the house and remodel the kitchen and remodel the bathrooms, all of these different things can be much larger or smaller ticket items, but you need them in order to maintain a home. If you don't do these things, then your home is going to have a bunch of different issues and bigger, bigger ticket items are going to pop up.

• 28:07Andrew Giancola?

  And so you have to make sure you are maintaining these items. So, all that being said, there is a ton of different expenses to owning a home. And anybody who is a brand new homeowner is probably like, amen to that. I did not understand this until after I bought a house. But I could just tell you right now, things are going to break, things are going to go out, just over and over and over again. Now, if you rent, typically you want to make sure that in the contract, you can just call up your landlord and they will fix any of those items. If you own a home, that liability is On you. And so you have insurance, you have all these different things that you need to make sure that you are taken care of when you own a house. And so this is something that we have tried to help you solve. We have something called the total cost of ownership calculator. That is one for your house. If you go to mastermoney.co/resources,

• 28:52Andrew Giancola?

  the total cost of ownership calculator is there and you can utilize that spreadsheet to run the numbers. It's going to tell you, is it cheaper in your area to buy? Or is it cheaper in your area to rent? And that is how you find the answer. I can't tell you the answer. You have to actually go out and run those numbers in order to figure out what that answer is. Number seven is I make over $150,000 a year. Should I stop investing in a Roth IRA and Roth 401k? So the Roth IRA phased out for 2024 begins at 146,000 and 230,000 if you're married. And if you are ineligible due to income currently, and you got to look at your specific income situation, you can utilize something called the backdoor Roth IRA. So the way this works is that you open a traditional IRA

• 29:33Andrew Giancola?

  and then you put the money into the traditional IRA and then you convert it to a Roth IRA. I do this at the beginning of every single year. It's one of the first things I do and it's really important to do. Now the Roth 401k, the difference here is that the Roth 401k has no income limit. And so you can continue to invest in a Roth 401k with your higher income and you could still contribute regardless of what your income is. You can also consider a traditional 401k and I would talk to my CPA or advisor about this, but if you have a traditional 401k, you can also consider that as well if you need the tax deduction now in this year. But I am a very big proponent of the Roth and the Roth 401k is absolutely fantastic. So if you have access to a Roth 401k and you have those high income limits, then that may be the move for you if you want to continue on in the Roth

• 30:16Andrew Giancola?

  because they don't have income limits in the Roth 401k. Should I move my money from the Roth 401k to the Roth IRA or are they the same? So they are not the same, but both are Roth. So the Roth 401k is offered through your employer and has required minimum distributions at age 73. The Roth IRA has no RMDs and you have more control and more investment choices. But the difference there is it does have income limits. So if you have those income limits, then the Roth 401k is a good option. Not worried about those income limits, then the Roth IRA is also a great option because it affords you some extra flexibility and you are able to look at it that way. Now in a Roth 401k, you can also get more into that Roth 401k. And so that is another spot to think through where

• 30:58Andrew Giancola?

  you can get that $23,500 in the Roth 401k and in the Roth IRA, you can go to get $7,000 per year. So that is something I like as well about the Roth 401k. There's pros and cons to both. They are very similar, but they are not the same. In terms of how they work, money goes in, that's been taxed, the money grows tax-free and you can pull the money out tax-free. But the difference is that Roth 401k has those required minimum distributions, meaning that at age 73, the government's going to tell you, you got to start taking that money out. So you want to make sure that you understand those differences and moving from your Roth 401k to the Roth IRA just depends on your personal situation there. Number nine is my mortgage is at 6.625% and you always say over 6% is high

• 31:38Andrew Giancola?

  interest debt. Should I pay it off early? So the caveat with an over 6% rate mortgage, especially this one's right on the line. But the caveat is if your mortgage is above that 6% interest rate, what I want you to do is pay off anything else that's above a 6% interest rate and you can keep the mortgage for the time being. And then your goal is to refinance that mortgage when rates drop. So the beautiful thing about a mortgage is that you can refinance when rates drop. Now, we don't know when rates will drop. You have to be willing to carry that mortgage for a longer period of time if the rates are higher. But I don't want you to just put all your cash towards a mortgage and you have no investments for your future. That is not in your best interest at all. So if you have this mortgage and it has a little bit of a higher rate, then I would still maintain

• 32:20Andrew Giancola?

  that mortgage and wait for rates to drop and then refinance when it makes sense. I don't want you to drain your emergency fund or drain your liquidity for that. So the caveat always is to anything above a 6% interest rate is except for your mortgage. And I typically try to say that if I ever miss it, let me know. But we typically try to say anything above a 6% interest rate outside of your mortgage is the key that we want you to think about there. All right. And the last one is number 10 is have you heard of the AIQ ETF and what are your thoughts? Yes. So the AIQ ETF is a global artificial intelligence and technology ETF.

• 32:54Andrew Giancola?

  And it focuses on AI-driven companies. Now, I love a good focused ETF if that is something that you're interested in. And this is what they consider a thematic ETF, which means it's narrower and more volatile. It's going to go up and down more. It's more speculative than something like VOO, which you know, is the top 500 companies in the US stock market. So it's a very big difference. But here's why I don't love this ETF specifically. And the first red flag that would be for me is the expense ratio. It has a 0.68% expense ratio, which for me, in my opinion, is way too high. If you're going to have an expense ratio like that, you need to make sure that somebody is managing your money in that range. Because if somebody is managing your money,

• 33:36Andrew Giancola?

  then maybe it's a little more justifiable. That's what like robo-advisors would charge, or a lot of low-fee advisors would also charge that. And they would charge less than that. And so something like this is probably not something that would be a core position in my portfolio because that fee. You can use this as a smaller percentage of your portfolio if you want to. But that fee is going to eat into your returns over the course of the long term. But keep your core, you know, investments in low-cost index funds. I would consider that a high-cost ETF. You want to keep it in low-cost ETF. VOO, for example, is 0.03% expense ratio. So the difference there is pretty big. That has 65 basis points higher expenses than something like a VOO does. So just think through that as you start to build out your portfolio. But I love AI. I am very, very,

• 34:19Andrew Giancola?

  very bullish on the future of AI. I think it is going to be the core difference maker in the economy. Listen, thank you guys so much for being here. And if you guys have any questions, again, join the Master Money newsletter by going to mastermoney.co/newsletter, and you can respond to any of those newsletter issues that come out, and we will answer your question on the show. Also, thank you guys so much for being here. Again, if you're getting value out of this episode, consider sharing it with a coworker, family member, or friend. Our entire goal is to bring you as much value as we possibly can on this show. And I hope we've done that today. Again, thank you so much for listening. We will see you on the next episode.

• 35:11Speaker 02

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