Financial Advisors React to Outrageous Money Clips

Start a free trial, and get 50% off your first year of Monarch Core Tier with code MONEYGUY at https://bit.ly/monarch-moneyguy Financial advisors react to outrageous money advice from Dave Ramsey, viral finance influencers, and the internet's wildest money clips! Brian and Bo break down expensive car payments, AI investment advice, hidden wealth, costly tax mistakes, and the financial decisions that could derail your future. Should you always pay cash for a car? Can AI really help lower investment fees? And why do some people look rich while actually being broke? From the 20/3/8 car-buying rule to smart investing and emergency fund strategies, discover which viral money tips are worth following—and which deserve a second look. ⁠⁠⁠⁠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.

• 0:00Brian Preston?

  Welcome to another react episode. The team is put together outrageous clips for us to look at.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Brent, I am so excited to check out today's outrageousness. Let's look at it.

• 0:12Speaker 02

  Okay, your total seventeen thirty-eight. That can't be right. I only ordered a cheeseburger combo. My mistake. I didn't hear you say combo. Twenty-three eighty-one.

• 0:21Brian Preston?

  Goodness gracious.

• 0:25Speaker 02

  We do offer financing for any combo meal purchase. Oh, perfect.

• 0:30Brian Preston?

  Four easy payments.

• 0:30Speaker 02

  What about your credit score? Four thirty-nine. Not so perfect. Perhaps we can interest you in a hamburger with no ketchup. No, I need the combo. What if I get someone to co-sign on a cheeseburger? What else am I supposed to do? Cash out your 401K? How do you think I used to pay for the chicken tender combos? Take out a HELOC on your home? I already did that for the chocolate shakes. Downgrade your car? I already downgraded to a PT Cruiser with two hundred fifty thousand miles on it. Yeah, it's not possible to downgrade more than that. You could trade it in. I'm not trading in my car for a cheeseburger combo. Then perhaps a hamburger with no ketchup.

• 1:07Brian Preston?

  Or side of fries.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Can you at least put some bacon on it? Bacon will be an extra two dollars and fifty cents.

• 1:19Brian Preston?

  Bo, do you remember when you bought your first greater than twenty dollar cheeseburger?

• 1:25Speaker 01

  I, no, I don't. I mean, I know I have, but I do not remember my first. No.

• 1:29Brian Preston?

  Mine was, my first was in Beverly Hills, probably twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:36Brian Preston?

  And by the way, they burnt the heck out of this hamburger. I paid twenty-five dollars for this horrible hamburger in Beverly Hills. And now what was funny is I have noticed I've had a lot more twenty dollar plus hamburgers at restaurants.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's one, obviously, food inflation is a real thing. It's gotten a lot more expensive. But I do think a lot of people, they find themselves in that same kind of thought process. Oh, well, I can't really afford this thing. What opportunities do I have that I can borrow from my future self to pay for today? Now, this was obviously tongue in cheek, talking about a cheeseburger and making a combo. But how often do we see people say, okay, well, I can't really afford the car, so I'm just gonna finance it over seventy-two months. And I can't really afford this, so I'm gonna take out a home equity line to go on the vacation. I'm gonna rack up credit card debt. And when you end up financing, when you end up spreading out payments, all you are doing is you are robbing from your future self to pay for yourself today.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  You will never get ahead financially doing that. Don't allow consumption decisions today to steal from your future self.

• 2:40Speaker 03

  I uploaded my entire portfolio in Claude. It saved me sixteen thousand dollars a year after tax. I said, tell me everything I'm doing wrong or any improvements. It said, one of the funds that I was holding was paying a slightly higher expense ratio than a near identical fund that I could buy from Vanguard.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:58Speaker 03

  And it said, if you sell this fund, you could realize this tax loss, move it into this other fund that has a lower fee, and that fee works out to sixteen thousand dollars a year.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Tax loss harvesting is a great thing to do inside a portfolio. If you have positions that are at a loss, you can sell those, capitalize on those losses. And then you should always, and I would argue do this likely every single year, review the internal expense ratios of the funds that you're invested in. Now, if you're a low-cost index investor, you're buying stuff that costs like point zero one five percent, you might not be changing that a whole lot. But if you do have actively managed funds, or you have more expensive indices inside your portfolio, you should at least audit those every year to make sure you have the lowest-cost share class available or lowest-cost alternative for that investment option.

• 3:43Brian Preston?

  Share class analysis is something we do for clients every year. This is something you can replicate. I mean, go look, if you're doing things like the S and P five hundred, they're not all created equal. You know, we've had to do analysis. Some exchange traded funds are not cheaper than like Fidelity's FX, AIX, or, you know, did I get the? Holy cow, look at that. That's just the, look at the noggin there on the memory of those ticker numbers. But there are ways, and there's even zeros that are out there now.

• 4:16Brian Preston?

  Did I screw that up?

• 4:16Speaker 01

  No, ticker numbers. I'm with you.

• 4:18Brian Preston?

  Come on.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  No, no, I'm with you. Keep going.

• 4:19Brian Preston?

  Almost called it the ticker number. So let's, let's calm down with, you know, that I didn't get it right. I'm playing horseshoes here. But it is an important concept to understand. Look at those internal expense ratios. Make sure that you're getting the lowest cost, but also pay attention to the tax cost of doing those transactions to fix it. Because it might be something that you just fix going forward because you don't want to pay uncle for, for the tax of, of flipping it all over.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  But make sure when you do this, you know exactly what you're doing. Because what you don't want to do is go in trying to think you're taking advantage from tax losses. And what you end up doing is creating wash sales by buying identical funds or materially similar funds instead of materially different funds. If you do that, you will not be able to take that loss. So you can't just sell one S and P five hundred index here and buy another S and P five hundred index here. That would be a wash sale. You have to make sure that they are not nearly identical holdings in order to be able to capitalize on that alternative.

• 5:14Speaker 04

  Most of the people you think out there are very rich, they're actually broke. They actually have no money. They actually have one foot on a banana peel and the other one on bankruptcy, and they're about to go under. Most people are just a paycheck or two away from being homeless. That's what people don't realize. Yet we get caught up in this world of seeing so many people with all this fancy stuff. All they have is a job. That is not wealth. And by the way, if you told me you're making ten million dollars a year and you're doing great, but you're saving nothing and investing nothing, you're not wealthy either. You've just got a really good job. Wealthy people have assets. Wealthy people have cash flow. Wealthy people have more money coming in each month than they could ever spend on their personal expenses.

• 5:51Brian Preston?

  But I love it. It is, it is one of those things where it's not the lifestyles of the rich and famous. It's not the cribs. It's not, you know, whatever the new generation thing is, probably just going on Instagram and seeing everybody's flex. That is so detached from reality. The reality is, is that you want your net worth to be kind of stealth, silent, and working in the background. And I remember at a young age, I figured out owning stuff was the secret because you could build your army of dollars behind you. So you could own your time that much sooner. That's the true flex of life.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  At the end of the day, it's much better to actually be wealthy than to just look wealthy. If you want another great book to help you figure out how to do that the right way.

• 6:35Brian Preston?

  I know where you're going.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Check out Millionaire Mission.

• 6:37Brian Preston?

  Millionaire Mission. I tell you not only about the financial order of operations, so you know what to do with your next dollar. I give you the why, the motivation, how money works. I wish somebody would have handed this to me when I was at the beginning. But also, even to me, when I was figuring out how money works, because I put a lot of the tips in there, that even if you are, whether you're, your first dollar invested versus being ten million dollars, there's gonna be a tip in there because I can't help that I'm a nerdy tax guy.

• 7:03Speaker 05

  I'm twenty-three with a goal to retire in fifteen years, and here's how I saved a thousand dollars today. Driving home, my brakes went out. Got home and found fluid leaking everywhere and realized all my brake lines were rusted bad. This was going to be expensive. Instead of taking it to a shop, I binged YouTube videos. Ended up replacing the entire brake system from brake lines to hoses, rotors, calipers, everything that needed it. I spent just over a thousand dollars on parts. At a shop in a high-cost area, this probably would have been over two thousand dollars easily. Before this, I had never changed brake lines or replaced calipers or done any of this work, so I saved money and learned something new.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Okay, yes, know thyself. Know thyself. If you have a skill set where you are mechanical and you can pick that up and you can go binge watch YouTube videos, perhaps that makes tons of sense. However, if that is not your forte, if that's not inside your skill set, I would be careful taking on something like taking apart your automobile, taking off the wheels, taking apart the rotors, taking apart the calipers, and assuming you can put it all back together. Because had that been me as a young man, I don't know that I would have had that outcome. I think what would have happened is I would have taken my car completely apart, and then I'd have to call the mechanic and come to my house, fix it, I'd have to pay for a house call and pay for the repairs. So some things that make sense to DIY and save money on a hundred percent, but be careful DIYing the things that could actually cost you more because you screw it up royally.

• 8:18Brian Preston?

  Some of my favorite YouTube content is watching people fix stuff. I, I literally, like yesterday, watched a gentleman change tires on a semi truck without a jack. And I was fascinated by it. And I wanted to be friends with this guy, because that's actually my skill set, is I could be friends with that guy. Because you either know that you can do this stuff, or you know if you probably should just be a YouTube viewer. My brother and my father were mechanics. And that is, that is a talent, a skill that I, I just, I'm impressed with anybody that is that good with their hands. People who are good at this tend to also, it's reflected in their life.

• 8:59Brian Preston?

  It's just like my dad could go buy a car with two hundred thousand miles on it, keep a mechanic's bag, and he's like MacGyver putting chewing gum and rubber bands and could get it home no matter what. Me, I'm just gonna have to call a tow truck. So, you know, know yourself, know what you're good at, and then lean into that skill set.

• 9:17Speaker 06

  I refuse to let car culture make me broke. When my mom gave me her old paid-off two thousand nine Toyota Camry, it felt like the greatest honor was just bestowed upon me. I didn't care what that car was. It's paid off and free to drive. Me and Tiffany have been kicking it ever since, and I have no intention of replacing her until I'm dragging the bumper down the road. The car is paid off, and I only pay around eight hundred and fifty dollars a year for car insurance on it, and I have yet to have any major maintenance costs. Everything has been standard, like tires and brakes. If I were to buy the same car new right now with a standard twenty percent down, three-year loan at the current average rate, I'd be paying around seven hundred and two dollars per month on my car payment and around two hundred dollars a month just for insurance. Now, don't get me wrong, I love my Toyota down, and I'm saving for a nice Land Cruiser by them because it's gorgeous.

• 10:00Speaker 06

  But every mechanic and detailer I have brought it to over the last five years has said it looks immaculate inside and out and should last me at least another hundred thousand miles. So why the heck would I upgrade?

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Now, Brian, I gotta be honest. I'll pull a Brian during that video. You know, sometimes we watch these videos and like, you see a thing, and then your mind starts wandering around the thing, and you can't, and you can't, and you like, forget to like, watch the video. I only caught the second half of that because my wife does the same thing. She takes an iced coffee inside of a glass in the car, and she either has one of those like metal spo, one of those metal straws or a glass straw, and she takes it in the car. And you know what happens when that coffee's gone? She literally sets it in the car holder, and it, well, it just dings. It just dings for the entire car ride. It's, it drives me.

• 10:43Brian Preston?

  You meant that the straw was going to get gunky?

• 10:45Speaker 01

  No, it just clings and clings and bangs and bangs the entire car ride. So the fact that she is able to do that and keep her sanity. Blows my mind.

• 10:53Brian Preston?

  God bless your wife for having Sandy being married to you.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  It.

• 10:57Brian Preston?

  Because y'all hear it? I've always was guys riding down the street going.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  I doubled.

• 11:02Brian Preston?

  Trying to get the sound to go away when he hears any squeak.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  You.

• 11:06Brian Preston?

  Creak or anything else that's going on.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  We're gonna pick y'all up for dinner and I'm gonna tell her bring her coffee. You're just gonna listen to anyways. That was fantastic financial advice. Yes, why would you go buy a new car when you have a perfectly good car that only costs you $75 a month in maintenance? Good for you. You make 99% good decisions. Just the one bad decision was glass straws in a car.

• 11:29Brian Preston?

  We have some content that we're working on behind the scenes, not ready for public consumption just yet. But I'm trying to show small decisions you make in life that have huge results. And car purchases, this is the one, because I mean, I'm not gonna call names, but they might be sitting near me. They upgraded their car, even though they had a paid for one right out of college. And you're not the only one. I've seen a gazillion people do it.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  But they just know it was nine and a quarter percent. How can I say no?

• 11:55Brian Preston?

  I will show you in some upcoming content where this one decision on the car you drive will cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. And that's the part that if she can just keep living this life, her future self will have the reward of driving that Land Cruiser without any regrets, because hopefully she's saving and investing and letting her army of dollar bills do the heavy lift.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Brian, I know you didn't grow up wealthy, but I'm assuming you never had to trade in a PT Cruiser for a bacon cheeseburger.

• 12:26Brian Preston?

  Well, I would make that trade because the bacon alone is probably worth more than the PT Cruiser. But no, thankfully, I've never been so desperate for a combo meal.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've never had a ton of debt, but when my wife and I got married, we did have student loan debt. And by we, I mean she, obviously. And it was a big relief when we finally got them knocked out. What I wish we would have had at the time was something like Monarch. Because Monarch has this debt simulator that lets me put in all the balances, all the payments. And it shows me exactly when I can be debt free.

• 12:58Brian Preston?

  Yeah, and it actually is a really helpful tool because you can run different payment scenarios side by side and see how much sooner each one gets you to paying off your debt.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  And that's powerful because so much of this stuff is behavioral. When you can actually see the finish line moving closer, it can really give you that motivation you need to keep going.

• 13:17Brian Preston?

  And the sooner that debt's gone, the sooner your army of dollar bills can start working for you instead of against you.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Getting debt behind us was an important part of our money story. And whatever chapter you're in right now, even if it involves driving a beautiful PT Cruiser, Monarch can help you move forward.

• 13:33Brian Preston?

  So write your own money story with Monarch. Use code MONEYGUY at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code MONEYGUY.

• 13:46Speaker 07

  In case you're having a bad day, I owe the government over $10,000 and I need to pay it today. So let me explain what happened, why I owe the government so much money and what you could do to prevent it from happening to you. So what I didn't realize about being a content creator and making money. Kitchen was in the room. Is that I'm considered a self-employed business and my business is literally me being me. Which is kind of weird to me because this doesn't feel like a business. I'm just a guy who makes content and loves helping people with their finances. The government, it's considered.

• 14:08Brian Preston?

  There's so many things going on in this video that, oh gosh.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Let's watch it one more time, but this time, close your eyes and let's just listen to it. So close your eyes, let's just listen and see if we get what he's talking about. Okay, close your eyes.

• 14:20Brian Preston?

  Are we really gonna do this?

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, close your eyes.

• 14:21Brian Preston?

  You're not gonna like hit me.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  No, no, I'm gonna close my eyes too. Close your eyes.

• 14:24Brian Preston?

  Okay, okay.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  All right, now play it guys, our eyes are closed, play it, and let's see if we can figure out what he's saying.

• 14:29Speaker 07

  In case you're having a bad day, I owe the government over $10,000 and I need to pay it today. So let me explain what happened, why I owe the government so much money and what you could do to prevent it from happening to you. So what I didn't realize about being a content creator and making money online. Is that I'm considered a self-employed business and my business is literally me being me. Which is kind of weird to me because this doesn't feel like a business. I'm just a guy who makes content and loves helping people with their finances. The government, it's considered a business. And because this is all new to me and I just started making money from social media two years ago. Didn't realize I was required to make quarterly payments towards my taxes. So in April of this year, I paid over $40,000 in taxes overnight. Whoopsies, you live in and learn, right? Oh my God, Bradley's a financial coach and he doesn't even understand taxes. Shut up. I'm very good at saving money, but it doesn't mean I know everything about money. And I can be honest, I thought quarterly payments were optional just to keep organized with your taxes throughout the year.

• 15:14Speaker 07

  But no, I learned the hard way last year that it is not an option. You must do it. And if you don't pay your quarterly taxes, you're gonna get penalized, which means you're gonna owe even more money. I think I owed like $1,500 in penalties from not paying my quarterlies last year. I know. Stupid. So we learn from our mistakes and now we make our quarterly payments on time. Because I don't want the government to have more of my money. I file my taxes next year, at least I'm not gonna owe like $45,000 all in one day. And this is a wonderful lesson, why I live frugal, why I preach being responsible with your money and saving it. Because when the taxes are due, I am not stressed and I have the money to pay them off. Thanks for watching.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Okay, let's open our eyes.

• 15:44Brian Preston?

  You, you know what I've realized? He's a successful content creator.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Was it easier that way?

• 15:48Brian Preston?

  Because if he had to pay $40,000 in income taxes.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:52Brian Preston?

  Congratulations. It's not always an easy thing to be able to actually, a lot of people want to be content creators and influencer types, but very few actually make it. But he's done it, so congratulations.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  So as I was able to close my eyes and focus on that, it sounds like he did not make his quarterly estimated payments and he was not accounting for that. Because he didn't pay on time, he got hit with a bunch of penalties as well.

• 16:14Brian Preston?

  The first year you make big money, as long as you paid in greater than last year's taxes, they give you a little bit of, oh, you didn't realize you were gonna have it. There was a disconnect somewhere there where he grossly underpaid what he should have. Because the government does put in some protections there. But once you, especially if you, once you make over $150,000, you're going to be paying some estimated tax payments because the government wants their cut. And don't forget just the income taxes, it's also self-employment taxes, which is Medicare and Social Security, 15.3%. You know, most employees, your employer pays half and then you pay half, that's 7.65 on each side. With this, you pay it all because welcome to the wonderful world of self-employment.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  Hey, listen, you can't take it with you when you gone, so we gonna spend it.

• 17:02Brian Preston?

  Snug it.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Hey, Popeyes on me. You need to get a job and work long hours for the next 40 years. Save as much money as you can and never spend. Harper, you need to start investing while you're young. Here, I'll help you get exposure to the S and P 500.

• 17:18Brian Preston?

  You don't need to get a job, you just need to learn how money works. So let's play Monopoly. It's not about what you know, it's about who you know. Okay, that's probably true too.

• 17:27Speaker 07

  Hold on one second. Hey Senator, how's it going? The trick is to start a bank and loan money to governments and charge interest. That way you basically own them.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  All right. Well, until, until the last one, who knows? There were some, there were like some nuggets.

• 17:43Brian Preston?

  You don't think there's a cabal out there running things?

• 17:45Speaker 01

  I don't know, I don't know, Mr. Cabal.

• 17:47Brian Preston?

  They're wearing masks at night and then, you know.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 17:50Brian Preston?

  We've all seen Eyes Wide Shut.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  The, I think what's interesting is there were parts and pieces in each one of those that I think you can take away. Yes, you should get a job and work hard and try to earn and you should put time in, but you should also save and invest. And it is also about figuring out, how do I make my money work harder than I can? How can I network well, both professionally and as an investor? I think there are parts and pieces in all of those. And he had them separated by classes, but I don't think you have to fall in one of those classes to be able to take that nugget from that class and apply it to your personal financial life.

• 18:22Brian Preston?

  Yeah, and I, I do agree that, I think that there's some, his Illuminati could fit up very well with some Star Wars cosplay. A little Kylo Ren action there. Do you see it? Do you even know who Kylo Ren is?

• 18:36Speaker 07

  No.

• 18:39Brian Preston?

  Han Solo's son?

• 18:40Speaker 01

  What?

• 18:41Brian Preston?

  Oh gosh, I just ruined it all for you. Okay, look at all the hours you just saved.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna watch the movie, I guess.

• 18:48Brian Preston?

  Okay. God, you are such a Chad.

• 18:52Speaker 04

  New car loses 75% of its value in the first four years. Teslas are worse.

• 18:56Brian Preston?

  Rachel drives electric cars.

• 18:57Speaker 04

  Go look at a four or five year old Tesla and look at how much they go down in value.

• 19:00Speaker 06

  Buy that, buy the four and five year old.

• 19:02Speaker 04

  No, don't.

• 19:03Speaker 06

  What?

• 19:03Speaker 04

  The technology's a disaster.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  What?

• 19:05Speaker 06

  No, it's not.

• 19:06Speaker 04

  Yes, it is. You can't even, you can't even reboot them.

• 19:09Speaker 06

  What are you talking about?

• 19:11Speaker 04

  Anyway.

• 19:11Brian Preston?

  I'm with Rachel on this.

• 19:12Speaker 06

  No.

• 19:13Speaker 04

  A, listen.

• 19:14Speaker 06

  I'm a Tesla owner.

• 19:15Speaker 04

  I know, George just gave that car away to get rid of it.

• 19:20Speaker 06

  What are you talking about? That is not true.

• 19:23Brian Preston?

  Dave is trying to be funny.

• 19:24Speaker 06

  Electric cars.

• 19:25Speaker 04

  No, I hate the value.

• 19:26Speaker 06

  He hates electric cars. Yeah, the value.

• 19:28Speaker 04

  I do hate the electric cars, but I hate the value drop too.

• 19:30Speaker 06

  So if you're gonna, yes, so if you're gonna go buy one, go buy a used one so you don't take the hit.

• 19:35Speaker 04

  You own any car and don't finance it. If you have to finance it, you can't buy it and it shouldn't be more than half your annual income. And if you can't pay cash, don't buy it.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  We agree with Dave that if you can pay cash for a car, that's obviously the best way to pay. But a lot of people are not in the position where they can pay cash for a reliable automobile. And rather than going out and spending a couple hundred, couple thousand bucks on absolute junker, we would rather you follow 238. You put 20% down, you finance it for no more than three years or 36 months, and it cannot exceed 8% of your monthly gross income. If you can buy a car that falls into those confines, you are gonna prevent yourself from getting out ahead of your skis. But you're still gonna be in a reliable automobile that you can drive for the long term. Whether that be an internal combustion automobile or even an electric automobile.

• 20:24Brian Preston?

  By the way, Dave is right, the depreciation is legit on these electric cars. So here's what you want to try to do if you want to navigate this. Go look at the hardware number on especially Teslas. Like if you can get hardware for and have somebody else take that depreciation, it's a chef's kiss on getting that full self-driving for a deal. And if you buy it from a private party, a lot of times it will transition to the new owner. Now, as soon as you buy from a dealership, you lose that opportunity. But there's, there's some hacks and tips so you can actually save money and respect Dave Ramsey, but also respect George and Rachel.

• 20:59Speaker 05

  Whenever I run out of money, I lend myself money from the money that I have saved. So now technically I'm in debt to myself. But after two weeks, I usually forgive myself because I have an unspoken rule between myself and I that me and myself cannot get into problems. So I usually let it slide.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  A lot of people build up an emergency fund, they use the emergency fund to fund purchases. Hey, I need to go buy a car, I'm going on vacation, whatever. There's nothing inherently wrong with doing that, but an emergency fund is there for a reason. It's there so when an emergency happens, you are protected. So if you do, you need to prioritize putting money back in. It's why we have, Brian, hold the thing up for me.

• 21:33Brian Preston?

  Oh yeah.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  It's why we have the financial order of operations. If you're someone who's rocking along in step five, six or seven, but you have to go pull money out of your emergency fund to fund some sort of thing going on in your life, we want you to go back to step four, fully build up that emergency fund so you can get back on the wealth building train as fast as possible.

• 21:50Brian Preston?

  Yeah, but here's what's exciting. If you could actually practice discipline, living on less than you make, where it actually does become a habit of saving and building. Yes, emergency reserves are two steps. It's steps one and steps four. But man, oh man, does magical stuff happen when that savings turns into investments with tax-free growth in step five? When you get into maxing out retirement, of course, who wants to skip out on step number two? Get that free money from your employer. That's when really the magic of your army of dollar bills growing. And that's what I like is look, most Americans are not very good at saving. They're all about the consumption side of things. And that's why I'm here to tell you, there is a better way to do money.

• 22:33Brian Preston?

  If you go to moneyguy.com/resources, we will literally load you up with free resources, tools, calculators, all the things you need to accelerate your wealth building journey and understand how your money works. I'm your host, Brian, joined by Mr. Bo, Money Guy team, out.