Pod Insights Money Guy Show Top 10 Mind-Blowing Money Stats (2025) About this episode Money in 2025 looks different than you think. We break down 10 shocking stats (from the rise of Buy Now, Pay Later debt to why the average first-time homebuyer is nearly 40). These numbers aren’t just surprising - they hold powerful lessons for your financial future.
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.
NordVPN.com/MONEYGUY
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business. We cannot stop your new clients from emailing you at 3 a.m.
0:09 Speaker 00 We can help you sell, market, and hire in one place. We cannot help you be in three places at once. And while we can't help you organize your calendar, LinkedIn can help you land more clients so you have a calendar to organize. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at LinkedIn.com/smallbusiness.
0:30 Speaker 01 The best part of waking up? A full cup of Folgers coffee and music on full blast.
0:56 Speaker 01 Shop Folgers instant coffee and more at your nearest retailer.
1:00 Brian Preston? We've got some brand new money stats for 2025 that we think will absolutely floor you.
1:06 Speaker 03 Brent, I am so excited about this because the world of personal finance isn't always super juicy, but sometimes we hear a stat that absolutely blows our minds. And those stats are what we're going to share with you guys today.
1:19 Brian Preston? So love them, hate them. These 10 stats will absolutely shock you and some towards the end are downright mind blowing. So be sure to stick around, but with that, Bo, let's jump right in.
1:38 Speaker 03 So Brian, this first stat is an oldie but a baddie. It's one that just drives us nuts. We know that right now, according to Bankrate, 59% of Americans could not come up with $1,000 for an emergency.
1:51 Brian Preston? Yeah, I think it's important for all of our financial mutants to know and remember, this is why we bring it up every year. Your emergency reserves is your protection or your barrier from what life throws at you. So you don't have to make desperate decisions. So make sure you plan accordingly.
2:07 Speaker 03 Yeah. So how do I do this? What do I have to figure out? Make temporary sacrifices. How can I live on just a little bit less than I make today? So that I can have a cushion in place so that my financial life does not get derailed. Cause far too often, we see people that live way too lean and then one of those unknown unknown comes happens and they just start swiping. They just start racking up the credit card debt. You do not want to be in that situation.
2:33 Brian Preston? So how you protect yourself, obviously protect your, you know, make the temporary sacrifices, living on less than you make. And then also don't sleep on the fact that your financial order of operations is great and making sure you know exactly how much to have to start that emergency funds with step one, highest deductible coverage.
2:51 Speaker 03 So if you want to have a free copy of your own financial order of operations, you go to moneyguy.com/resources, download it and you will know and be equipped to know exactly what to do with your next dollar. All right. That's the first one. You ever the next one, Brian?
3:05 Brian Preston? Yeah.
3:05 Speaker 03 All right. Mind blowing stat, number nine. And this one, this one is not an oldie, but this is a frustrating one because it has come on the seam rapidly. The average user of buy now, pay later has borrowed almost $4,000.
3:23 Brian Preston? And here's a captain obvious statement. Majority of these people, nearly half of them have reported at least one financial problem. And here, let's talk about these. There is 24% said, hey, because we use this buy now, pay later, we have regrets about overspending. How about the 16% that missed a payment? Or how about the 15% once again, being pushed by consumption in our society, regretted the entire purchase?
3:49 Speaker 03 And what is buy now, pay later? It's this idea of, okay, I don't need to actually spend money on this thing today. I can just make four easy payments of $19.99 or five easy payments. So it allows the barrier to be so thin between me consuming today or waiting to consume tomorrow. And what's absolutely wild is that 49% of consumers, one out of two people in America will use buy now, pay later in 2025. And 20% said that they're doing this. Every single month, there is a new loan being incepted every month. It is wild, Brian. We did a quick little survey of our team here and said, okay, of you, all of you guys here on the Money Guy team, who uses buy now, pay later?
4:32 Brian Preston? None of them went up.
4:34 Speaker 03 Was zero. That means out there, there are groups of people, cohorts of people where everyone is doing it. And that is not good.
4:42 Brian Preston? So the fact that none of the financial mutants on our content team have ever used this means that there's a lot of general Americans that are following this. So I think let's talk about some key takeaways. Convenient debt, because that's what this is. This is purchases of convenience and they're making it that much easier, seeming like this is a bridge of opportunity. Convenient debt is still bad debt.
5:02 Speaker 03 And people say, oh, Brian, there's no interest rate. It's not, it's not like a credit card. It's different. If you're someone who's doing buy now, pay later, so that you can pay a small amount now and not have to pay full amount. There's a good chance that you can't afford that thing you're buying. And frankly, if you can't afford it, don't buy it. One of the keys to being able to build towards financial, your financial future is mastering deferred gratification. The idea that I don't need it today, I can save up for something and I can have that something tomorrow.
5:33 Brian Preston? Yeah. And then here, here's another point. You got to get the small things right. I, I think about the fact of when I'm trying to, to, to grow my financial mutants, I'm telling you, hey, make small, good decisions for yourself. And the first thing you can do is have disciplined work for you. This buy now, pay later is very dangerous for you because it not only works against that component of discipline, but it takes away that time that money could be working for you. So don't let these small things, because that's, that's where, that's why it's so dangerous is it feels so little that this can't hurt me.
6:08 Speaker 03 The average loan right now is only a hundred and forty dollars. And so people are thinking, oh, this, this is so easy. It's so simple. It's so small. It's not significant, but we know eighty percent of personal finance is behavioral. So if you begin doing these bad behaviors, figuring out these bad habits, they will follow you through the rest of your financial life.
6:30 Brian Preston? Speaking of bad habits, let's talk about number eight. 27% of trade-ins for new cars have negative equity.
6:39 Speaker 03 Okay, what's that mean? Let's think about conceptual as what that means. That means that when I go to trade in my car, I actually owe more on the car than it is worth, and I am rolling that into my next purchase.
6:50 Brian Preston? Yeah, well, I mean, look at this. Close to 8% of people owed more than $15,000. If we tried to figure out what the actual average was of negative equity in the second quarter of 2025, according to Admins, it was right under $7,000.
7:06 Speaker 03 That means that when you go to purchase a new car, you are paying, because of negative equity, you're taking out a loan that is $7,000 higher than the cost of the automobile. So what's causing this? Why is this happening? Well, one, and we see this all the time, it's low down payments. We know that cars are depreciable assets. As soon as you drive them off the lot, they go down in value. So if you have no skin in the game, and you're doing 0% down, day one, minute one, mile one, you are going to be underwater on that automobile if you don't put down a down payment.
7:37 Brian Preston? So quick depreciation, we know that's bad. How about the fact that longer loan terms? If you think about the fact that the typical loan is now 68 months, that is almost double what we talk about when we say 238.
7:51 Speaker 03 And then what about high interest rates? We know that right now, for a used car, the average new interest rate for a used car is 11.9%. Almost 12%. Even for new cars, which are highly subsidized, the interest rate is almost, is a little over 6.5%. So all of these contributing factors are causing people to get underwater on the automobiles and continue to exacerbate this bad decision moving forward. So what's the solution? What's the takeaway?
8:20 Brian Preston? Here's how we protect ourselves. Nothing wrong with you buying used reliable cars. I mean, that's where I started my journey. I remember the first two cars out of college that I bought were used cars, new to me, but, but still used reliable cars.
8:34 Speaker 03 So I'm hearing you say this, Brian, used reliable car. That means I can go out and buy a two-year-old Mercedes right now, right? Like that's what, no, no, used car. Like I'm going to get last year's Tesla Model X because that's going to be, that's what you're saying.
8:45 Brian Preston? I'm saying now, look, reliable transportation to get to your first builder of.
8:51 Brian Preston? Quality, you know, assets, which is your job. You have to have, be able to live on less than you make and getting used reliable transportation. It's not breaking the bank is going to be a key part of that.
9:04 Speaker 03 And a way that you can make sure that the car falls into the reliable realm is if you can follow 238 with your purchase. You're going to decrease the likelihood of being underwater. And if you've never heard of this before, 238 is simply a rule that says, when you go buy a car, whether it's new or used, we want you to put 20% down. We don't want you to finance it for any more than three years or 36 months. And that car payment cannot exceed, all of your car payments cannot exceed 8% of your monthly gross income. So that's 238, but there are two caveats we always throw out there with them.
9:34 Brian Preston? Yeah, we don't want you buying luxury cars with this. If you're trying to buy a BMW, Mercedes, any of those premium brands, same as cash. I want you to pay it off like it's cash in the first year that you own it. And then car payments should not exceed your monthly investments. If you've got a car payment that's bigger than what you're putting your Roth IRA, what are we doing?
9:53 Speaker 03 You got a problem. And then another thing you can do when it comes to automobiles is you can make sure that you maintain them well so that the car will last you for a long term. If you go out there and buy some luxury car to where you can't afford to replace the brakes, you can't afford to do the oil change, you can't afford to replace the tires, and you're just going to drive it till the wheels fall off, there's no way that that car is going to last you. When you buy an automobile, it ought to be a seven, 10 year purchase, unless you're someone who is at the stage of life where you're trading in your cars and paying cash. One of the best ways to make sure your car can have that sort of life is by actually maintaining and actually taking care of it.
10:34 Brian Preston? Yeah, and this is one of those things, guys, it is so much better to actually be rich than to look rich. So don't drive around in your wealth because all these decisions where people are financing and driving cars well beyond what their paycheck would recommend or suggest for them are failing to miss out on their Roth IRAs. All the things that their future self will regret because they were trying to fake it until they made it.
10:57 Speaker 03 All right, we talked about cars, which is a huge purchase. Let's talk about the next biggest purchase that most people will make in their lifetime. And this one really was a mind blowing stat. Would you believe that right now? The median first time home buyer is 38 years old, almost 40 years old before they're buying their first
11:15 Brian Preston? Well, let's actually pull up, if you pull up the stats on this, it's even scarier than this. As you can see, if we'd have just gone back a decade previous, that, that stat was 31. But that's not even the full picture is because look at repeat buyers, that number has gone from 53 to 61.
11:30 Speaker 03 Just since 2015.
11:31 Brian Preston? But, but, but here's the thing that kind of blew my mind is if you look at all buyers, when they group them all together, we went from 44 all the way to 56. This means my first time home buyers are actually less represented.
11:43 Speaker 03 Yep.
11:44 Brian Preston? More dat- more of re- repeat buyers, meaning this is less and less younger people getting in. And that part breaks my heart because a home affordability is something I think a lot of us aspire to. This is something that I hope in the coming years, we have better news to report.
11:59 Speaker 03 And so one of the questions, okay, why, why is this happening is because home affordability is at an all time low. We know that if you look just a few years ago and March of 2019, if you had a household income of $75,000, roughly half of the housing marketplace was affordable to you. You fast forward to now, March of 2025, only 20% of available houses are affordable. It's cut in half how much you can go out there and buy what houses are available. Even if you go up to a household income of $100,000, where the number of houses that fell into that affordable range was 65% of the inventory, now it's only 37% of the inventory. Houses are just not affordable in the same way that they were even five or six years ago.
12:43 Brian Preston? Yeah. And for my podcast listeners, I mean, think about even if you went up to 125,000, that's the income level you'd have to be to afford 52% of the marketplace. And that's, that's pretty dagum successful, whereas just a few years earlier, six years ago, you could have afforded close to 75% of the market. That, that's kind of wild. I, like I said, I'm optimistic and hopeful that this will improve, but in the meantime, let's give you some takeaways so you can know how to navigate this.
13:09 Speaker 03 Yeah. And I want to be clear, this isn't just about housing affordability. There are other factors. Yes, student loans are different now than there were a number of years. And there is now a sentiment that homeownership might not be for everyone. But if you are someone that wants to own a home, we believe that there are some right ways to do it. And the first thing that we would encourage you is don't be in a rush to get into your first home. Far too often we see people say, I gotta buy, gotta buy, gotta buy. It's the next step, next step, next step. It's only the next step if it's the next step that makes sense for you. Don't feel like you have to make this giant, huge purchase just because other people are suggesting that you should. You need to make sure that it makes sense for your life circumstance and it's part of your financial goals.
13:53 Brian Preston? The second point is you don't need a home to build wealth. The way I would phrase this is don't force it.
13:58 Speaker 03 That's right.
13:59 Brian Preston? There's nothing wrong with you if you realize a home affordability in your area is just not great right now, especially when you compare rent versus own and rent is like handily beating out the down payment with the interest rates and everything else. Don't force it. I would encourage you, start building your army of dollar bills outside of the home so that you have better options and opportunities in the future.
14:22 Speaker 03 So if you are in the market to buy a home and you do want to do it the right way, we want you to follow our three, five, 25 rule. And what that suggests is that when it comes to your down payment, you don't have to put down 20%. You can put down a down payment as low as 3%. We don't require 20% for first time home purchasers. We also want to make sure that you plan on being in that home for at least five years. If you don't know that you can be in that home, in that location for five years, homeownership might not be for you. And we want you to make sure that the total cost of your housing is less than 25% of your gross income. So if you can follow three, five, 25, even in a market where home affordability is difficult, you're likely going to set yourself up to be in a sound financial situation.
15:06 Speaker 00 LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business. We cannot make your email response time faster. We can help you sell, market and hire in one place. We cannot help you find space for your three desk drinks. Why do you have three? And while we can't help you find the perfect volume for your presentation video, LinkedIn can help you find the perfect audience for your business. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at LinkedIn.com/smallbusiness.
15:36 Speaker 01 The best part of waking up? A full cup of Folgers coffee and music on full blast.
16:02 Speaker 04 Shop Folgers Instant Coffee and more at your nearest retailer.
16:06 Brian Preston? This leads to number six. Income only explains 30% of net worth.
16:14 Speaker 03 No, no, Brian, that's gotta be wrong. That's gotta be wrong.
16:16 Brian Preston? I think there's a lot of people, look, without a doubt, making a bigger income can turn into a better opportunity.
16:22 Speaker 03 Can.
16:23 Brian Preston? Can, but unfortunately, because of, I don't know if it's lifestyle creep or it's just lack of discipline, there's a lot of people out there that are spending every dollar that comes into their household. So that's why you cannot directly say income is resulting in higher net worth for the majority of people.
16:41 Speaker 03 Yeah, we always say all the time on the show, it doesn't matter how much you make, it matters how much you keep. Is your, do you have the ability to turn your income into wealth? I think it was J.L. Collins who said, everybody thinks they want to make a million bucks. But the answer is, the truth is, you don't really want to make a million bucks. You want to spend a million bucks.
16:57 Brian Preston? Morgan Housel.
16:58 Speaker 03 Or Morgan Housel is the one who said that. You want to spend a million bucks. Well, those two are in vast contrast. Just because you have a high income, just because you have an ability to spend a lot of money, does not mean that you're going to have the discipline necessary to be able to use that money to create margin, to ultimately create wealth. And a lot of folks don't believe that, but we've seen the counter with our folks.
17:22 Brian Preston? Yeah, so let's give you the takeaways, guys. I want to make sure that you know anyone can build wealth. It's really leaning into that first ingredient on the three ingredients of wealth building. Discipline. Can you live on less than you make and actually put that money to work?
17:37 Speaker 03 And so, you know, every year we do a survey of our millionaire clients. We ask them all these questions around what they look like and the decisions they make and the behaviors that they implement. And what's wild is when you look at our clients, would you believe, and this excludes our retired clients, so our clients that are still working age, 12% of our client base here at Abound Wealth Management has household incomes of less than a hundred thousand dollars, and yet they've been able to build up sizable portfolios. It's not about the income, it's about what you do with the income.
18:07 Brian Preston? And that leads to the next thing. Just do something.
18:09 Speaker 03 That's right.
18:10 Brian Preston? Smart, even if you start small, I'm okay with it. I think there's this false narrative that people put in their head is that I'll just do it later when I make more money. Guys, you'll never be able to get back that time. So I'd rather you start now with $50 a month, 5% of your income. You choose what that starting point is, but we gotta do something.
18:31 Speaker 03 It's getting easier for you to start somewhere because a lot of people will say that, hey, the number one place that I started saving, the number one place I started building wealth was inside of my employer sponsored retirement plan. And that actually leads to our number five mind blowing stat. 61% of 401k plans now have automatic enrollment where if you don't want to participate, if you don't want to be part, you actually have to opt out as opposed to opt in. And the results of this small little change have been mind blowing.
19:02 Brian Preston? Yeah, this one makes me, this warms my heart a little bit is because of the way some, some legislation changed and encouraged employers. We put the headline on here because we're both Georgia boys from Athens, Georgia. Automatic for the people. Look at what has happened since 2006. Automatic for the people has caused people, now we got 61% auto enrollment. More people are going into retirement plans and their future selves will thank them for it because this is what helps you build your great big beautiful tomorrow.
19:32 Speaker 03 Think about this, plans that had automatic enrollment had a 94% participation rate compared to 64% without that. That means that because of this automatic enrollment, people are, I say being forced, that's not true, but it's a lot, people frankly are not willing to take hold of their financial life. And because the automatic enrollment is doing that for them, it's getting them participating. And of those, 69% of folks who do automatic enrollment have it built in where every year it gets 1% better. So this year I got automatically enrolled at 3% and next year it's going to be 4%. And the year after that's going to be 5%. And what's awesome about that is that if you start early enough, it does not take
20:12 Speaker 03 a lot to have a huge impact. We actually have a great deliverable. You can go to moneyguy.com/resources. And download what 1% more can do for you. And I want you to think about this in the context of these 69% of participants in automatic enrollment plan that are getting 1% better every single year. It is making a huge drastic impact to what their retirement will look like. They are literally replacing years of their retirement living need just by being in automatic enrollment and improving their savings rate every year.
20:44 Brian Preston? For my podcast listeners, because they're not seeing this on the screen, this is why I want you to go get this deliverable. So you can see specifically for your age group, a 20 year old who actually increases this by 1% can almost impact your retirement by 10%.
20:57 Speaker 03 Huge.
20:58 Brian Preston? That's huge. 1% equals 10% in retirement. For a 30 year old, that 1% change can change your retirement by close to 5%.
21:06 Speaker 03 Awesome.
21:06 Brian Preston? Guys, these are small decisions that are going to have big results for you. So that's the takeaway is make the good habits as easy as possible. And you can automate this because that makes it that much easier and more likely to create success for the long term.
21:21 Speaker 03 And I want to be clear, the way that automatic enrollment works for a 401k plan is the plan sponsors, hey, you didn't tell me what you want to do. So I'm going to automatically make you do it. We don't want you to be in that camp. We want you to volitionally decide, I want to do this. I want to contribute. But if you can set it up to happen automatic, you are going to make that good habit as easy as possible. And you'll be amazed what happens after six, eight, 12, two years, three years, five years, a little back and say, holy cow, that little automated process that I put into place had a huge impact. And even if you can't save 25% or you can't save
22:01 Speaker 03 the desired savings that you want to do, something is better than nothing. Maybe you can only start with $20 a month. Maybe you can only start with a hundred dollars a month. Maybe just do this. Take your take home pay, whatever your paycheck is, whether it's a monthly paycheck or a weekly or a bi weekly and just say, okay, whatever that net amount is, I'm just going to save 5%. I'm going to take 5% of that amount and I am going to choose not to spend it, but rather to put it aside for my future self. And you will be amazed at how that can change your financial life.
22:36 Brian Preston? Yeah. And I love the fact, because we're talking about, we're giving all the benefits of automating, but that's really only half the battle. Guys, take an active role in what you're investing in as well. And then Please, if you don't hear anything else on the show, because this leads to the next point that we'll bring up, make sure the money's actually getting invested. Nothing breaks my heart more when I find out people are really good at the saving side of things, because that's the, the discipline. But you've got to finish the drill and actually put your money into your army of dollar bills so they can work just as hard for you. So make sure you invest that money, because the next stat that's going to break your heart is when you find out 28%.
23:15 Brian Preston? Now, we were just talking about 401ks, but 28% of IRA rollovers remained in cash after seven years. What? What are we doing?
23:25 Speaker 03 So Andy Reid, he's the head of investor research behavior at Vanguard, he literally called this, he said IRA cash, cashing in IRAs is a billion dollar blind spot. Folks putting their money into IRAs via rollovers or contributions and not doing anything with it. And so you maybe ask the question, okay, well, how's this happen? What's going on here? 68% of folks said they didn't realize it was in cash. Oh, I thought it was being invested, but it just sat there in cash. 48% said, hey, I thought, as soon as I rolled it over, Vanguard was just going to take care of it, they're going to automatically invest it. I thought this was going to happen for me. And then 15% of folks said, you know what? I knew I was supposed to do it. I knew I was supposed to invest. I knew I was supposed to get it working for me.
24:09 Speaker 03 I just never got around to it. I just never did it. Half the battle is saving the money. Half the battle is putting the money into an account and not spending it today, but you have to make sure you finish the drill. You have to make sure you actually invest those dollars so that they can begin working.
24:25 Brian Preston? So let's fix this today. If you go look at the key takeaways from this is know what your dollars are invested in. First, listen to the show, hit pause right now, and then go pull up your accounts and say, oh.
24:37 Speaker 03 Okay, good.
24:38 Brian Preston? Make sure this money is truly invested, so you're not part of this horrible statistic.
24:42 Speaker 03 And remember, automated does not mean autopilot. Automated means, hey, every month, I'm going to have my money come out and it's going to go to work and I have automatic purchases and I'm going to have that taking, but I'm not going to ignore it. I'm going to check my monthly account. Statement. I'm going to look at my quarterly report. I'm going to do my annual net worth statement. So even though I have an automatic process in place, making the good habit as easy as possible, I'm still going to be the field general. I'm still going to keep an eye on what my dollars are doing to make sure that they're doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing.
25:14 Brian Preston? Yeah. And I think this last one, this kind of made me sad a little bit because I like to think a lot of these people is just a mistake. But then I see this that is because we say you don't have to have it all figured out. And what I mean by that is that when they surveyed these people, they found 27% said they didn't invest because they were overwhelmed with all the investment decisions.
25:32 Speaker 03 Doesn't have to be.
25:32 Brian Preston? Guys, this is something, a lot of ways, this is why we talk about target index funds is because you just choose how much you can save, when you need it, or if you're just, maybe you've progressed beyond that, you can do just general index funds. Just make sure you don't have to get cute with this. Put your money to work. Let your army of dollar bills do some work for you.
25:54 Speaker 03 And the solace that you can have is if you put your money to work, if you actually begin participating in the equity markets, do you realize markets are up eight out of 10 years? People think that the stock market, oh, it's, you know, it's like gambling. It's red or black. It's win or loss. That's not true. If you look at any given decade, over a 10 year part period, the markets are usually up for eight of those years and down or have a bear market in two of those years. So the deck is kind of stacked in your favor.
26:23 Brian Preston? Well, I think a lot of people, because the nightly news covers all the ups and downs throughout the year. And without a doubt, we have a stat here. We'll show you because it's not a shocker to you. There's a lot of intra-year declines, meaning that even in really good years, the market might be down as much as 49%. We've seen that in certain years, but if you just average it out, there's a likely a 14% intra-year decline that even good years have. It's just, you need to zone out of that noise and just know. Markets make money eight out of 10 years. You're going to be okay even with all the volatility that's happening on a day-to-day basis.
27:05 Speaker 03 And when you stack that up over a long time period, what you'll recognize is that bear markets are much smaller than bull markets and they last much shorter than bull markets. Again, we have this illustration we show from 1942 all the way till 2022, every bear market, every bull market. And what you can see is how relatively severe the bear markets are to the bull markets. They pale in comparison. So not only is the market up eight out of 10 years, but when it's up, it's up really big. And when the market is actually down in those two years, yeah, it might be painful in the moment, but when you zoom out and look at it, it's literally just a blip on the radar. I think it was Peter Lynch that
27:45 Speaker 03 said, more money is lost trying to avoid the next downturn than just participating in it. And this drives that home. You're going to hurt yourself a whole lot more by missing out on the next bull market than even if you got the timing right and missed out on the next bear market.
28:01 Brian Preston? The average bull market, according to First Trust, 150% gains.
28:06 Speaker 03 Total gain.
28:07 Brian Preston? Whereas the average bear market, a loss of 32%. So it's just, I think sometimes, yes, it's scary to lose 32% or to weather that. But if you can just be consistent, control your behavior, you will be better for it because that leads to the closing tip. When in doubt, zoom out. I mean, look at this chart. I mean, this is amazing.
28:29 Speaker 03 This is since the Great Depression.
28:30 Brian Preston? I mean, it's all time 17,000%, meaning you have to move that decimal over too to really see what's going on here. And look, we even put on the chart, there's scary stuff, you know, whether it's the collapse of the Great Depression, Black Monday, dot com bubbles, Great Recession, even the COVID crash. There's always going to be scary things whispering in your ear why you need to be concerned or sitting on the sidelines. But when in doubt, zoom out and your future self will be rewarded for it.
29:02 Speaker 03 So you can understand the markets and you can see this, but we don't just want you to get excited about understanding the markets. We want you to also understand the mathematics because when it comes to investing and when it comes to building for your financial future. The math is pretty exciting and that leads to mind blowing stat number two. Would you believe it if we told you that $250,000 is halfway to 1 million?
29:30 Brian Preston? Now, wait a minute, Bo. Something, something doesn't compute here. The math ain't mathin'.
29:34 Speaker 03 Math ain't mathin'.
29:35 Brian Preston? 250 out of a million, that's 25% and you're saying that's half. Half is 50%. How can 25% be 50%?
29:43 Speaker 03 So let's show you this. Let's assume that you're going to save $833 a month. You're going to save $10,000 every single year and let's assume that you can make 8% rate of return on those dollars. So I'm going to save $10,000 a year, a little over 800 a month, and I'm going to make 8% per year. Well, after I have been investing for 13.8 years, putting my money to work, letting it grow, I will have gone from $0 to $250,000. It took me 13.8 years to get there.
30:16 Brian Preston? Okay.
30:17 Speaker 03 But you recognize that if I just keep up the exact same behavior, exact same savings, exact same rate of return, keep doing the exact same thing, then over the next 13.8 years, I go from 250,000 to 1 million. 250,000 may not be halfway in dollars terms, but it is halfway in time terms to a million.
30:40 Brian Preston? Man, this is why compounding interest is magical is because you're halfway there. So yes, it's only a quarter of the money. It's 250,000 out of the million dollars. But from a time standpoint, you're already halfway there because that money's going to start growing upon itself. It's beyond the bowling point or bowling point, however, you know, I can't say things well. But it is amazing and a lot of you are like hearing, but guys, that sounds like 27, 28 years. That seems like too much for me. Here's the good news. You actually control this, even though you're halfway to a million dollars. You control, if you just invest more, you're going to actually accelerate this journey even faster.
31:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, let's start, let's start even, let's start lower. If you could save $500 a month, it would take you about a little Little over 33 years to get to a million dollars. Well, the halfway point in terms of time, if you're watching your annual net worth statement is when you hit 209,000. If you can save a thousand dollars a month, it'll take you about 25 and a half years to get to a million. So your halfway point is about 266,000. If you can save $2,000 a month, it'll take you about 18.4 years to get to a million. Your halfway point will be just under 325,000. And if you can save $4,000 a month, that's about $50,000 a year, it will take you just over a decade, right at 12.4 years to
32:01 Speaker 03 get to a million. And when you get to $383,000, you are halfway to that million. Your behavior matters. And a lot of people say this all the time, Brian. Um, man, a million dollar, I don't know why you guys talk about a million. Why is a million, why does it matter? Why is it important? Like, a million today is not worth what a million was in 1990, whatever, when Dr. Stanley wrote Men in the Next Door. But man, it's still a pretty awesome accomplishment.
32:32 Brian Preston? Well, it's a huge milestone because guys, and we love seeing you guys celebrate this. You don't keep it a secret. I love even on our Reddit threads, you guys are out there sharing with our audience or other fellow financial mutants that you've crossed a million dollars. And here's the thing, yes, I know inflation has, has hurt what a million dollars purchasing power is. But as we just showed in, in the number nine amazing or surprising facts, it's gonna be a heck of a lot easier to hit 2 million when you've already crossed a million. It's gonna be easier to hit 3 million when you've crossed that million because this stuff stacks on top of each other. Compounding interest is truly the eighth wonder of the world. And I love it when you cross into that seven figure status because magical stuff continues to happen. It's not the end of the
33:17 Brian Preston? journey. It's actually the beginning of even more magical stuff happening in your financial future.
33:22 Speaker 03 And do you recognize that when you hit the two comma club, once you get into seven-figure status, having a net worth of $1 million literally puts you in the top 10% of America? Getting to that milestone. So yeah, maybe a million isn't enough for you. Maybe your number is 1.6 million or your number is 2.2 million or your number is 4.3 million. If you want to know what your number is, you can go to learn.moneyguy.com and check out our Know Your Number course. But whatever your number is, when you hit that threshold, when you cross into seven-figure status, that automatically right there puts you in the top 10%. And that is something worth celebrating because of the hard work you've put into building towards your great, big, beautiful Mara.
34:07 Brian Preston? Oh, I've got a great way. If you really want to feel special and celebrate your accomplishments financially, especially if you've crossed into seven-figure status, we've set up a website for you. If you just go to moneyguy.com, you can look at become a client because we love celebrating our financial mutants. We call this the abundance cycle where yes, you come here, we give you tons of free stuff. Just go to moneyguy.com/resources. We'll load you up with all the free stuff, but there will come a day where you're always, man, this simplistic thing that I started has gotten really complicated. What's the next steps? We're going to leave the porch lights on for you and hope that you will cross into that threshold and give us an opportunity to continue to pay it forward, continue to make you feel special, because we really do believe there's a better way to do money.
34:52 Brian Preston? I'm your host, Brian Preston. Mr. Bo Hanson, for the rest of the Money Guy team, Money Guy out.
34:58 Speaker 03 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 of 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.
35:31 Speaker 00 LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business. We cannot stop your new clients from emailing you at 3 a.m.
35:40 Speaker 00 We can help you sell, market and hire in one place. We cannot help you be in three places at once. And while we can't help you organize your calendar, LinkedIn can help you land more clients so you have a calendar to organize. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at LinkedIn.com/smallbusiness.
36:01 Speaker 05 Now streaming on Paramount+. I'm Dexter Morgan. I've been killing killers for half my life. It gets to you. You're having a midlife crisis. I'm not ready for this. He's back. I'm older. I'm wiser. And sharper than ever. Things are gonna get messy. But if I can't believe in myself, I can't believe in anything. Dexter: Resurrection. New season now streaming on the Paramount+ Premium Plan.
Previous How Student Loans Are Crippling Americans (& What They’re Doing About It) Next Financial Advisors React to GOOFY Financial Advice Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated