Grow Your Money Faster With These Wealth Accelerators

Want to build wealth faster without gambling, chasing hot stocks, or taking unnecessary risks? In this episode, Brian and Bo break down the biggest wealth accelerators that actually move the needle—from increasing your savings rate, maximizing income, reducing debt, minimizing taxes, and automating your finances to advanced strategies like real estate investing, house hacking, equity compensation, entrepreneurship, and leveraged investing. Learn how to eliminate financial drag, optimize your investing strategy, reach financial independence sooner, and make smarter money decisions using proven financial planning principles. Whether you're just beginning your investing journey or already building serious wealth, these accelerators can help your dollars work harder for you. ⁠⁠⁠⁠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.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  The action's on the court and as the official beer sponsor of the NBA, Michelob Ultra is getting fans closer to the game with a chance to win courtside seats, merch and more. Visit michelobultra.com/courtside to enter. Michelob Ultra Courtside 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to US residents 21+ Begins on October 1st, 2026 and ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes and details.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard? But not the pipeline. That's bull spend and marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions.

• 0:39Speaker 00

  My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had. Impressions.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  Cut the bull spend. See revenue, not just reach. LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply.

• 1:00Brian Preston?

  Do you ever wish you could build wealth faster? Today, we're going to show you how.

• 1:04Speaker 03

  Brian, I am so excited because today we're talking about wealth accelerators that can speed up your wealth building journey and stick around to the end because we'll cover some advanced ways to grow your money even faster.

• 1:16Brian Preston?

  So I'm Brian, he's Bo and this is the Money Guy Show where two financial advisors help you modify your money with financial nitrous oxide. So you can Tokyo Drift your way to wealth. I said that. And with that, let's launch.

• 1:37Speaker 03

  So Brian, today we're talking about wealth accelerators. And when we say accelerator, we mean anything that can help you grow your money faster without gambling, speculating or skipping steps. And as we've thought about how to lay this content out, they really fall into three general categories. There are things that can provide more fuel. There are things that can provide less drag and there are things that can create better systems.

• 2:01Brian Preston?

  Yeah. If we're putting some color in this, more fuel, those that help you generate more money to invest. Talking about drag, these help you stop losing money and the momentum you're hopefully building. And then of course, on the system side, these are to help you navigate money decisions to stay on the course long enough to truly build wealth.

• 2:19Speaker 03

  All right. So let's start with the first one, Brian. Let's talk about the accelerators you can do that can provide more fuel. These are things that you want to maximize and that you want to increase. And the first one, I think is no surprise. If you've been listening to our content for any amount of time, increase your savings rate.

• 2:36Brian Preston?

  Yeah. By the way, we lean in heavily on discipline on you've got to live on less thing you make. If you can't do this, you're never going to be on the journey to building wealth.

• 2:47Speaker 03

  Your savings rate is likely the number one metric that determines and defines how quickly you can build wealth. And if you want to see this in real time, if you want to really understand what this looks like, check out our compound interest calculator. So let's say that you're earning $100,000 a year and your goal is to save 10% of your income. If you divide that out monthly, that comes out to $833.33. If you could invest that amount for a 30-year period, and let's just say that on average, you earn a 10% rate of return, do you realize at the end of that period, you would end up with over $1.8 million and you would reach the $1 million mark after 25 years of investing?

• 3:32Speaker 03

  Now, that is just assuming that you save 10%. Imagine now, what if you would save 25% of your income? That would come out to a little under $2,100 a month. If you did that same savings over a 30-year time horizon, again, still earning a 10% rate of return, you would end up with $4.7 million.

• 3:57Brian Preston?

  Now, look, there's a lot of people that say a million dollars isn't much money. I disagree with them, by the way, but 4.7, I mean, that's the type of money. We're talking about the level of wealth where even if you're using conservative withdrawal rates, you're doing tremendous things in retirement.

• 4:14Speaker 03

  So I want you to think about this. Increasing your savings rate from 10% to 25% allowed you to cross the $1 million mark eight years earlier. Because you increased your savings rate, your army dollar bills is growing faster and faster and faster. So your savings rate is by far one of the biggest impactors you can have to your financial wealth building.

• 4:35Brian Preston?

  So we want to encourage you, go out to moneyguy.com/resources, try out our compound interest calculator.

• 4:42Speaker 03

  And while you're saving, we want you to shoot for a 25% savings rate. And why do we say 25%? Well, the truth is, Brian, a lot of people don't start their savings journey super early.

• 4:54Brian Preston?

  Yeah, we've know from our own research is that the typical American doesn't even start saving and investing until they're 30 years of age. And then if you start saving and investing at 30 years of age, even at our healthy 25% savings rate and investment rate, you're more than likely not going to have independence until you're age 60. So that's why we have such an aggressive savings rate. If you want to personally know what your savings rate should be, we'd once again encourage you, go try out our free resources. Go to moneyguy.com/resources. We have the option for you to see exactly what you need to be saving for the future to live your best life.

• 5:30Speaker 03

  All right. So you're sold and you want to start saving more. You want to increase your savings rate, but how do you do it? You can't always just save more. You have to be able to pay the bills and meet your expenses. So what's the next accelerator that you should tap into? Well, we want you to maximize your margin.

• 5:49Brian Preston?

  Yeah, a lot of people, I've already kind of, I've given a little bit of a prelude on this, is I said, you have to live on less thing you make if you're ever going to build wealth. The problem is most Americans, they never reach that margin. If you look at this, 57% of Americans are living literally paycheck to paycheck.

• 6:07Speaker 03

  And as you imagine, the less margin that you have, the less difference in what you have coming in and what you have going out, the less money you have to move towards other financial goals. So when it comes to creating margin, there are really only two levers that you can ever pull. You can either figure out, how do I make more money, increase my income, or how do I spend less money, decrease my expenses?

• 6:31Brian Preston?

  So we're going to come back to the spending less money, but right now, let's first focus on earning more money.

• 6:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, your income is likely your greatest wealth building tool. How big your shovel is dictates how much margin you can create. So the bigger your shovel, the bigger your margin, the more margin, the more rapid you can accelerate your wealth building journey.

• 6:53Brian Preston?

  This is one of those things where when people come to us, they say, what do you feel about education? What do you feel about going and getting some credential? I'm always like, look, if you can first do the cost of benefit ratio, see if you're going to get a return on the investment, but if you definitely can go back to school and increase your income without running up a bunch of debt and other things, go investing yourself. There's very few investments that are better than you investing your ability to make more income.

• 7:18Speaker 03

  And if you can't go out and add a new skill or a new credential or increase your education, maybe you can consider starting a side hustle, some sort of freelancing or consulting, some way to generate income on the side in addition to your day job. Because again, if the goal is to move one of the levers and increase income, perhaps spending some of your extra outside of work time generating income is a great solution.

• 7:44Brian Preston?

  And Rose, you know, we just gave you a few examples on how to increase your income and or add more fuel. All these things can work together. You can, you can side hustle, you can go invest in your own education. There's all these things. We're just trying to help you increase your savings and investment rate so that you can increase how fast you're going to reach your financial goal.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  Now, remember, these accelerators fall into three categories. There's more fuel, less drag, and then there's building better systems. We just talked about more fuel. Now let's talk about the next wealth accelerator, which is less drag. How do we minimize the things that slow us down on our wealth building journey? And one of the very first things that we want you to consider minimizing is minimizing your debt.

• 8:30Brian Preston?

  Yeah, I feel like this is the first trap that most Americans fall into is that they, we get it. You've been in school for a gazillion years. You start actually getting your first real adult job. You feel like you ought to be rewarded or celebrate that. So people go out there and they either run up credit card debt, they go out there and they get a car loan. You need to be scared of debt. If you're using debt and you're not scared of it, you are using it wrong. That's why we literally say debt is chainsaw dangerous.

• 9:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, it can be napalm to your financial life. So much so that right now, according to Northwestern Mutual, 35% of Americans, so one in three Americans say they are carrying close to or at their highest level of debt that they have ever carried. Americans right now have a consumption problem because they are allowing their present day selves to borrow from their future selves and subsidize lifestyle today. If you're doing that right now, you're doing money wrong.

• 9:29Brian Preston?

  If you fall into this debt trap, they charge such predatory rates on a lot of these types of debts, you'll never get ahead. So that's why we definitely want you to lean in, get serious about avoiding this high interest debt, especially if you can.

• 9:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's why, Brian, we hold the thing, we actually have the financial order of operations that says if you do have high interest debt, it is step number three. So we want you to pay that off as quickly as you can. And once you get it paid off, we want you to avoid it at all cost. That's the consumption. That's the decisions that you make on a day-to-day basis. But we also, when it comes to buying the big things, when it comes to the large life decisions that you're going to make, we want you to follow our Money Guy rules for buying big things like vehicles or homes.

• 10:13Brian Preston?

  Yeah. I mean, the first one, cars. I told you, these are the traps that people fall into. I understand that a lot of you, your first wealth building opportunity is going to be getting to your job reliably. And we want to encourage that you have a car, not just a jalopy, that you, every morning you go out there and you have to do your little rain dance, hoping this thing cranks up. We want you to have reliable transportation. And for a lot of you, if you don't have resources when you're starting out, you're probably going to have to follow our 238. And what we say, when we say 238, what we mean is you're going to put down at least 20%. You're going to pay the car off within three years. That's going to keep your wallet very sober, so that you don't let your ego trying to get you to buy a car and

• 10:56Brian Preston?

  fall into that trap of financing it for six years, seven years and beyond. And then we don't want your gross monthly payments to exceed 8% of your monthly income.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  Now, there are two caveats. If you're buying a luxury car, you don't get to do 238. You got to pay a luxury car off in the same year that you bought it, inside of 12 months. And as a rule of thumb, your car payment should never exceed what you are investing on a monthly basis. If you have a thousand dollar car payment, but you're saving a hundred dollars a month for your future self, you are doing it wrong. So, most Americans don't make the car decision well. They also don't make the house decision well. And it's gotten even more difficult as we've seen home prices increase and interest rates go up. So if you want to make sure that you are staying inside the lines when it comes to buying a house, follow our 3525 rule. That's on your first home, you'll have to put 3% down.

• 11:49Speaker 03

  We want you to make sure that you're going to be in the home for at least five to seven years. And we don't want your total housing cost to exceed 25% of your gross income.

• 11:58Brian Preston?

  Now, realize, in future home purchases, meaning you go to upgrade because you have a growing family, we want you putting down 20% on the second home. But we do have very, very approachable rules on that first home purchase. Because we understand in this crazy real estate marketplace, it is going to feel like the housing market's running for you. So we give you a lot of grace on that down payment. But don't feel like you have to force it. We've done shows on is it better to rent versus own? Do your research. Measure twice, cut once. Because in a lot of American cities right now, it's actually cheaper to rent than it is to purchase, because the rent, the person that's renting the house probably bought that house at about half of what you could buy that house for. And they also got interest rates that historically just are not around at this moment in time.

• 12:43Speaker 03

  All right. So we're talking about how do we reduce drag, reduce friction in our financial life. We already said that we want to minimize the debt that we're incurring. But even further than that, we want you to minimize your expenses. Remember, we have two levers that we can pull when it comes to impacting our financial life. We can either make more money and increase our income, or we can spend less money and decrease our expenses. While decreasing our expenses is one of the things that we have the most control over.

• 13:12Brian Preston?

  Yeah, this is why we love people to track their spending. A lot of you, when you're trying to build that muscle memory of how you handle money well, you actually have to do, nobody likes the budget. But I think you have to do it in the beginning so you can find out where things are leaking, so you don't fall into financial traps.

• 13:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, if you can find, like oftentimes, we think about, okay, well, I'm going to know where my rent is. I'm going to know what my grocery bill is. I'm going to know what my fill in the blank is. And that's fine and good. But as time goes on, as life gets more complicated, a lot of times, when you're in the messy middle, you might recognize stuff just kind of sprouts up and things kind of happen. And all of a sudden, you start having money falling out that you didn't even know was falling out. Man, I signed up for that Hulu subscription because I wanted to watch that one football game. But then that football game passed and I never canceled it. Or man, I signed up for this thing so my kid could watch this PBS special and it was six bucks, but now they can't watch it anymore. And all of a sudden, you have these money leaks that are just happening that

• 14:12Speaker 03

  you didn't even know were going on. So if you can start tracking, if you can start seeing those dollars leave, it's going to allow you to start patching and plugging those holes.

• 14:20Brian Preston?

  Well, I'll tell you, a lot of us even have mystery subscriptions. So go and audit your, you know, go look at your credit card statements, look at your monthly bank statements, see what the outgoing things are every month. So you can figure out if there's ways that you can definitely plug up those leaks. And then also, I want you, because what's interesting is we all in high school are so insecure. And you get into adult life and you think, hey, I'm not going to be insecure anymore. Because, you know, I'm an adult now. And then you find out, wait, no, there's still a lot of peer pressure, is that we have to feel like we have to keep up with the Joneses. And that's why I would really strongly encourage you, take an active role in your life. You can avoid lifestyle creep. You do not have to feel like you have to try to keep up with your peers to impress people who probably,

• 15:05Brian Preston?

  realistically, don't care what you have going on.

• 15:07Speaker 03

  A really good way to combat lifestyle creep is as you have bonuses, or pay increases, or pay raises, think about the 60/40 rule. It's okay when you get a raise or bonus. If 60% of that money goes towards additional savings, additional financial order of operations, and then let 40% go to lifestyle. If you do that, you are going to make sure that your lifestyle does not outpace your savings rate. If you can do that, you're going to keep yourself on the path towards financial independence.

• 15:36Brian Preston?

  Another big thing that happens within less drag, is we just talked about expenses. But don't sleep on the fact that taxes are a big part. So you've got to minimize your taxes as much as possible. It's important for us to share with you guys, we realize tax evasion is illegal. And there's a lot of people out there selling systems or other things that might get you in some hot water. But if you're, if you're smart about this, think like a financial mutant, tax avoidance is actually highly encouraged. Meaning if you're following the letter of the law and doing things that are actually structured in the system, you're going to be A-OK and you'll actually be rewarded for this.

• 16:12Speaker 03

  And a number of accounts, even the way that they are established, are tax incentivized. You have health savings accounts, and 401Ks, and Roth IRAs, and 529s. All of these accounts help you minimize the taxes that you pay either today in the present year, or in the case of HSAs and Roths, in future years, when you go to pull that money out. And so one of the questions you may be asked is, okay, well, based on my situation today, how do I know if pre-tax is more valuable for me, or if Roth is more valuable for me? And again, we have a rule of thumb that can help you. If you add up your marginal federal rate and your marginal state rate, and it's below 25%, there's a really good chance that Roth contributions would be beneficial for you. Tax-free in the future is what you

• 16:57Speaker 03

  want to do.

• 16:58Speaker 00

  The action's on the court. And as the official beer sponsor of the NBA, Michelob Ultra is getting fans closer to the game with a chance to win courtside seats, merch, and more. Visit michelobultra.com/courtside to enter. Michelob Ultra Courtside, 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21+. Begins on October 1st, 2026, and ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard, but not the pipeline? That's bullspend. And marketers are calling it out in Dashboard Confessions.

• 17:36Speaker 00

  My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had: impressions.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Cut the bullspend. See revenue, not just reach. LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply.

• 17:57Speaker 03

  But if you're a higher earner right now, and you add up your marginal federal rate and your marginal state rate, and it's above 30%, there's a really strong case to be made that maybe you should consider pre-tax contributions. Because the current year tax benefit is so valuable, that you don't want to miss out on it.

• 18:14Brian Preston?

  Yeah, this is, and we even, there's a gray area there between 25 and 30%, that it's kind of more going to be specified on, are you young? Because young is definitely going to be more of a Roth person's game, because you have many more years for compounding growth. But also, where are you at in your asset level? Because even, no matter what your tax rate is, somebody who's in the legacy building parts of things, they might want to think about Roth assets. We've tried to give you tax efficiency pre-tax versus Roth. But there are a number of you that when it gets complicated, your simple life gets complicated, that's when a financial advisor might be able to help you navigate this even better.

• 18:49Speaker 03

  And then if you're trying to minimize taxes, the more educated you can make yourself, the more powerful you can be. So are you utilizing all the tax deductions and all the tax credits available to you? Maybe you're paying student loans. Are you remembering to track the student loan interest that you're paying? Maybe you have children. Are there income thresholds that you fall under that would qualify you for tax credits you may not have gotten otherwise? If you can understand where those deductions are, where those credits are, and what you need to do to be eligible, that could literally be more money in your back pocket and less money going towards Uncle Sam.

• 19:23Brian Preston?

  You know, one of my favorite tools that we use for turning a negative situation into a positive is tax loss harvesting. This is literally turning those lemons into lemonade. And the fact that what you'll do on this is if you will take losses, and then you'll get a current tax deduction. And even if you can't, once you, you can't even use that current tax deduction, because it's $3,000 a year, you get to carry forward into the future. And guys, I'm telling you, we use this all the time with our clients, is where we can strategically lock in losses. So when you hit those volatile times in the marketplace, that when then in future years, because realize, about 80% of the time, you know, markets are good. But that 20%, that two out of 10 years, you're going to love that you use

• 20:07Brian Preston?

  this tool to minimize your taxes, not only right now, but also in the future.

• 20:11Speaker 03

  And then even things that you do automatically, maybe that you don't think about, you ought to ask yourself a question, is there a way? For me to do this in such a way that might be more advantageous from a tax standpoint. For those that are charitably minded, there are incredibly efficient ways to either bunch charitable contributions, or even potentially use highly appreciated securities to make those charitable contributions. Where now you're making taxes that you would otherwise have to pay disappear forever. Again, if you can educate yourself and know what tools and tactics are available to you, you can keep more money in your back pocket.

• 20:47Brian Preston?

  I feel like we just covered more fuel, less drag. Those are kind of the basics things, but at some point you have to actually get to what's the horsepower of this system. And a lot of times that's the system, you know, is what, how powerful are these components that you've been compiling? And that's where we wanted to kind of go through, what are things that you can do that create a better system, better success, better opportunities for your future selves?

• 21:13Speaker 03

  I think number one is automate your finances. The more things that you can automate, the less likely you are to screw it up. You want to make the good habits as easy as possible, you know, like the bad habits as hard as possible. So are you doing things like setting up automatic payroll contributions into your employer sponsored plan? Are you automatically funding your Roth IRA? You're automatically having money going into your taxable brokerage account? If you can set those things on autopilot, you don't have to make sure at the end of the month, there's enough money to fund them. You have already paid yourself first and taken care of that thing.

• 21:47Brian Preston?

  Here's another thing, it's not only the good stuff that you can automate. You can also automate the debts and bills so that you don't, you minimize, you know, payments and penalties and other things. If you can set these things up, this is what we like to call our forced scarcity system too. If the money's already going out, it does a better job, once again, of what Bo said, making the good habits that much easier and the bad habits that much harder. If the money already has a time and a place of where it's going to be, you can't fall into traps that you might've done just from a behavioral standpoint.

• 22:16Speaker 03

  Now, again, we're talking about putting better systems in place. And a lot of times people are doing good things with their finances. They're making the right decisions, but oftentimes they're doing them out of order. They're not following the order that's the most efficient. And that's why another system that you can implement is the financial order of operations.

• 22:35Brian Preston?

  Oh yeah, you knew it was coming. As soon as you heard systems, you're like, there's definitely a better way to do money and it's gotta be the financial order of operations.

• 22:45Speaker 03

  If you want to get your free copy, you can go to moneyguide.com/resources and download your free copy of the nine step process to tell you what you should do with your next dollar.

• 22:58Brian Preston?

  I mean, that's what, that's what I love about it is it really literally tells you what to do with your next dollar. No matter where you are, you could be a person just now starting out in your early twenties. You could be somebody who's middle of the journey as well as somebody who's within three to five years of retirement. The financial order of operations is going to be your path so that you can maximize and be the best financial mutant version of yourself.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  Now, another system that you can put in place is a part system, but it's also part habit. This is something, Brian, that both you and I started doing very, very early on in our financial journeys. And that's tracking your net worth, having an understanding of, okay, where am I today? What are all the things that I own? What's all the money that I owe? And what's that net difference? And how has it changed over time? Because seeing your progress can be wonderful motivation to keep you moving forward, toward your goals.

• 23:49Brian Preston?

  Yeah. And that's what I like is it gives you milestones to celebrate. I mean, think about the first time you hit the two comma club of being a millionaire. Think about it, we can even back it up before that of thinking about when your, your army of dollars is actually making more money than you save in a year? How about even better, when is the first year that your army of dollars makes more than you made at work? I mean, this stuff, these are, these are magical milestones that will start showing up if you are tracking this and putting it into your net worth. I love that you actually get these moments to celebrate. And if you want to know the actual tool that Bo and I use for ourselves, I'd encourage you to go to learn.moneypie.com. You can actually see our net worth tool that we have that gives you a great dashboard.

• 24:32Brian Preston?

  So you can track, how are you paying off debts? Are you, how are your, your three bucket strategy between your different asset classes? Are you on the journey to abundance where you're actually, your money is making more than you do? All these things are available to you just that easy.

• 24:47Speaker 03

  All right, Brian, we've been talking about wealth accelerators. We've been talking about how do you have more fuel? How do you have less drag? How do you have better systems? And we really covered things that pretty much apply to everyone. We said, hey, we want to cover accelerators that don't involve gambling or speculating or taking on unnecessary risks. But it would be disingenuous of us to not at least acknowledge there are some other wealth accelerators out there that exist. And we're just going to affectionately call these advanced accelerators. Cause I'm going to contend, these are not for everyone. These are not things that

• 25:19Brian Preston?

  This isn't where you start.

• 25:20Speaker 03

  This is not where you start. This is not for the everyday person, but there are things that can be incredibly valuable from a wealth building standpoint, assuming you're at the right place in your journey to implement this.

• 25:33Brian Preston?

  So let's go through these pretty quickly. The first one is real estate investing. Now, look in the brochure, this is buying property that's going to generate, it's going to be rental income. It's going to give you equity. It's going to have all these tax benefits. What could go wrong with this? And it really is a cool thing where you actually get to have both an income source and an appreciating asset. But Bo, there's more to this. There's risk. What are the risks that a lot of people sleep on?

• 25:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. If you're doing rental real estate, like residential, you could have bad tenants. You could have vacancies. You could have repairs that you have to cover. You could buy at a very poor time from a market standpoint. And oftentimes you buy real estate, it's not super liquid. So you sink your money into this thing. There's no guarantee you can get your money out of it very quickly. So again, you want to make sure you have a sound financial foundation before you start eking into illiquid investing like real estate.

• 26:23Brian Preston?

  That's why it's more of a step eight of the financial order of operations. Another one that we actually are big fans of, we've talked about this, house hacking. Look, if you think about the way bank underwriting works as well as incentives that the government gives us from a tax benefit, your primary residence is already one of the biggest wealth builders that most Americans have. You slap on top of that is that you can go bring in other people's money to help you pay for your primary residence. Like I'm talking about, it could be renting out a, a room in your house. It could be buying a duplex and you living in one half or a quadplex that you live in a quarter of it. All these things are opportunities where you get the benefits of a primary residence, but now you're also bringing in the res, the rental real estate side of it? This is a win-win type situation.

• 27:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, it frees up more margin for you to now have money that you can save, or you can invest, or you can pay it on debt, but it too is not without its risks. Those risks include tenant issues, especially if it's friends or family and circumstances change. If this is your primary residence, there's another human being living in that with you. You have less privacy. Some local markets have rental restrictions where they won't allow this. You're still on the hook for repairs if you own it. And if you have a tenant move out, you still have a vacancy problem. So house hacking is a wonderful and useful tool, but it is not a free lunch and there are still risks involved.

• 27:43Brian Preston?

  Another advanced accelerator that we have a lot of experience and we see it all the time. You work for a company that gives you equity compensation. A lot of you go to work for a company and they're going to offer you stock options, restricted stock units, employee stock purchase plan. And they, and here's the thing about a lot of these, they give you incredible incentives. Like think about the employee stock purchase plan that gives you a discount of like 15%. And then it even does a price at either the lowest of the beginning of the quarter, the end of the quarter. These are things that are so strong that you at least have to pay attention to see how does this fit into my situation?

• 28:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. And you may be wondering, okay, well, how is this an accelerator? Well, when you actually have equity in your company, you're an owner. You sit alongside the C-suite in terms of owning the company. So if the company does well, if the equity increases, if the value of the stock goes up, it can oftentimes outpace your salary, outpace your pay raises, outpace your ability to save. So there could be large opportunities down the road if it does well. But just like all the other advanced accelerators, it's not without risks. There could be tax surprises. You may have a huge bit of your compensation that comes in RSUs and invest at the end of the year. Well, all of a sudden that now becomes a taxable event. Sometimes if you're an insider, or even if you're just participating in these plans, you may not be able to sell the stock as quickly as you want.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  Or you may have tons of concentration, not just of your human capital, working for this company, but now all your financial capital is tied up in there as well. So you want to make sure you recognize, okay, this is wonderful and it's a great opportunity, but how does it fit inside my entire financial picture?

• 29:14Brian Preston?

  Yeah. And you can see, we're trying to give you the balanced perspective on this, which is probably going to be a little different than what you're seeing with a lot of other social media channels. Cause the next one, leveraged investing. I feel like I can't help but watch my feed and I have a lot of personal finance content coming through. And there's always somebody that's over and over again, showing how you just, you can take a little bit of a down payment and either, you know, go use options, you can use triple levered. You can do all kinds of crazy things to really get leveraged investing to speed up my path. Bo, what are they not sharing? What are the benefits and what are the negatives also?

• 29:50Speaker 03

  Well, what leveraged investing allows you to do is it allows you to invest more money with less capital. And then it can magnify returns when things go well. But in that same vein, just like levered investing can magnify returns on the upside, it can also magnify losses on the downside. And if you're doing something like borrowing against your portfolio to access capital, then be able to invest, and then the market shifts, the stock goes down, the economy takes a hit. All of a sudden, you You might find yourself in a position where you do not have enough equity in the account to cover that margin. So you get called and you have to either start fire selling assets or you have to find some way to come up with capital to make the brokerage hole. So it is a risky endeavor when the stuff hits the fan.

• 30:34Brian Preston?

  Yeah, I mean, it can work. That's why every one of these that we're using is advanced wealth accelerators. Are viable things you can use. It's just, but pay attention to the risk and also where they fit in. That's why we're putting this at the end. This is not where you start your journey. This is something that you put in as a sweetener after you've had a little level of success. Now, the last one we wanted to kind of have, something we know a little bit about entrepreneurship.

• 30:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is a big one. This is starting, buying, building, owning a business. And this can be wonderful because not only can entrepreneurship help increase your income. It can allow your salary to increase, can allow your profit to increase, but it can also become an actual asset in and of itself. That provides you the opportunity to sell it down the road. And it creates wealth that is apart from just your labor executing and doing the job.

• 31:22Brian Preston?

  Yeah, and look, this has risk as well. I mean, if you looked at what the SBA shares on failure rates of small businesses, it's a pretty high, there's also you're having to do the work. So there's high burnout, there's definitely tax complexity, irregular income, lack of benefits until you reach a level of success. And I'm even willing to go a little deeper on this is that the amount of people that come to us, even with a level of success that haven't maximized their business structure, haven't maximized the retirement benefits and other things that are easy layups on lowering and minimizing the taxes. This is why I always tell people, guys, when you create success, your simple financial life is going to get so, such to a level of complexity.

• 32:06Brian Preston?

  You say, I just don't know what I don't know anymore. And guys, that's when we're going to leave the front porch light on you. This is exactly what we help people do across the country. Is that we help successful people navigate their personal finances. So they don't leave anything behind. So they don't have regrets. We can load you up with all the free advice in the world to try to get you motivated. Plant those mustard seeds all over the place. So that's why I would encourage you to go to moneyguy.com slash resources if that's where you're at. But if you've reached that level of success where you're starting to panic, you just don't know what you don't know, we'd really encourage you, go consider becoming a client. I'm your host, Brian, joined by Mr. Bo, Money Guy team.

• 32:46Speaker 04

  Out. 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 the Money Guy Show. 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.

• 33:28Speaker 05

  Hey, Bo's here. When your next track starts, listen for the decisions that the artist makes. The vocal pushed right up front, the bass that waits half a beat, that sample from a 70s underground gem, every choice deliberate. With Bo's, you'll hear it all. Your music deserves those.

• 33:55Speaker 06

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