We Have a BIG Book Announcement!

Pre-order the paperback edition of Millionaire Mission today at moneyguy.com/millionairemission The new Millionaire Mission paperback is finally here—and it's much more than a new cover. Brian has updated the bestselling personal finance book with new wealth-building stories, refreshed investing and retirement account contribution limits, updated case studies, and even more insight into his own financial decisions. Whether you're working toward financial independence, building long-term wealth, investing for retirement, maximizing your 401(k), Roth IRA, or HSA, or simply trying to make smarter money decisions, this updated edition is designed to help. Pre-orders begin July 28 and include exclusive bonuses for Financial Mutants, including access to special merchandise, Brian's Book Club, and exclusive Moneyverse Discord communities. 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

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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 0:39Speaker 02

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• 1:06Brian Preston?

  Hey, hey, we got a big announcement and it might have something to do with a little Millionaire Mission.

• 1:13Speaker 04

  Brent, I am so excited because this has been something that has been working in the background. It's been happening. It's been going on, but we couldn't talk about it, couldn't talk about it, couldn't talk about it. And finally, here we are where now we can talk about it.

• 1:27Brian Preston?

  Yeah. And, and just for catching anybody out there who's new to the channel, you know, I released my first book, Millionaire Mission. It was on May 28th of 2024. And what y'all don't, that was a, it was a project, a passion project that kicked off in 2020 that I started, I used the pandemic and all the extra time to, to kind of actually do the bucket list of writing a book. A lot of insecurity. You guys have no idea. When you write a book, you don't know if anybody's gonna read it. And then the fact that I wrote a financial book with a bunch of personal stories in it, I got really insecure. I was like, is this thing gonna do well?

• 2:06Brian Preston?

  And I'm happy to report, you guys showed up in droves. It became an instant New York Times bestseller. You loved the stories. I still read the comments on Amazon and the other book selling websites. But there are things that, because if you've ever written a book, for, for the handful of you out there have done it, the book is never, ever done, but they eventually just rip it out of your hands and say, "Okay, we're going to go take this to publish." So as the book came out, there were things that I, I, I just was like, "We can do better." And I feel like, I feel, it's not perfection, but it's the best version of itself is about to come out to you in paperback version.

• 2:49Speaker 04

  I'm so excited. Now, you said something a second ago. You said, "I wrote, in 2024, I wrote my first book." I just, we're getting some comments on that. That, that suggests like first is like a sequencing word. Is that, was that a, I just want to make sure this wasn't like a double announcement.

• 3:06Brian Preston?

  Just in case my publisher Matt's out there. I have not written a second book yet. I mean, look, we-

• 3:10Speaker 04

  Yet, you see these words he keeps using? First, yet. It's almost like this thing is writing itself.

• 3:15Brian Preston?

  Oh, I mean, I, I've told you, I, I do daydream. I would have loved to write a book with Bo. I mean, that's something we've, we've daydreamed about. I should probably whisper that, or at least we should probably figure that out before we say that to the, to the world. But it's, um, it's just hard. I mean, because you know, coming up with a concept and then actually having enough meat to, to, to where you feel like you're adding value to the world. But, um, we felt like, let's give you some flavor. I love this slide because it's, by the way, if you want to know what type of leader you are, come work at Abound Wealth and Money Guy Show, where it's almost like, because we have a good time here. I think you can sense what, what comes on air is what happens behind the scenes. And they decided, you know what, the first stat we'll do

• 4:00Brian Preston?

  is we're gonna show how good decision makers our clients are for the firm.

• 4:05Speaker 04

  That's what we wanted to let you know.

• 4:06Brian Preston?

  So Bo, set up this slide and then I'll kind of say where I, I fit into this.

• 4:11Speaker 04

  So every year we ask our clients here at Abound Wealth, "How long do you drive your cars?" When it comes to consumption, what is the ownership period that you have for cars? Because generally speaking, if you own a car for longer, that would suggest that you were more of a financial mutant. If you own a car for less time, we know that automobiles can be financial napalm. That would suggest you're less of a financial mutant. And so we asked this question and 83% of our clients, so over eight out of 10 of our clients, say that when they buy a car, they actually drive it, they own it for more than seven years. 83% said seven years. 14% of our clients said, "Hey, I actually don't quite make it to the seven year mark.

• 4:53Speaker 04

  I own my cars for less than seven years." 1% said, "This is not applicable." I'm assuming they live in some sort of city. Maybe they don't own a car yet or something like that. But there were 2% of respondents that answered, "I lease my cars."

• 5:08Brian Preston?

  Now, look, so for seven plus years, that's a financial mutant. Under seven years, that's typical American. And then, by the way, I didn't fill out this survey because we leave this for our clients, but, um, I do, one, I don't, cars, cars is plural. I have one car that, um, you know, that is, that is like, look, and, and if you read the, the updated book, is, I was like, you know what? This is something that other people are gonna be on this journey, just like I am. That's, that's my favorite thing about my whole adventure with money is that started with very little, you know, from humble beginnings. And then now I have this success and I love to kind of share what I've learned because that's the thing, that's the biggest thing about creating wealth is I realized

• 5:51Brian Preston?

  nobody's really done a good job of explaining what you need to know about money, both from the beginning, the middle, as well as when you get into sophisticated stuff. So I, I would put this under the sophisticated stuff. Obviously, if you're somebody who's in your twenties and thirties, if you're out there leasing cars, that is so outside of financial mutant territory. But if you're somebody who's beyond step eight of the financial order of operations, I have the anecdotes and I have the, the mind, the, the things you ought to go through from a, you know, a, a decision matrix that I want you to understand the mindset that goes into leasing cars. And I, and I give you the details on that in the book.

• 6:30Speaker 04

  What I love is we talk about all the time that there is a better way to do money, but even also the way that you do money evolves. You likely do money differently when you're in your 40s, 50s, 60s than you did in your twenties, thirties and forties. And that's okay. And what I love about Millionaire Mission is it kind of walks you through that. Brian's real life story, real life example of how even how he does money has evolved. But it's not just behaviorally some of the stuff that changed. Even since the original release of the book, a lot of stuff out there in the financial world has changed. One of the things, and this is just such an, such an easy one to draw attention to, in 2024, when the book was released, the amount that you could save for retirement, the amount that you could put in certain types of accounts

• 7:12Speaker 04

  is very different than it is today. If you think about the 401K salary deferral, in 2024, you can only save $23,000. Now you can save $24,500. IRAs went from $7,000 to $7,500. Simple IRAs increased, HSA contributions increased. So we want to make sure that when someone reads this book for the very first time, it's their first interaction with money and they read, "Oh, you can put $7,000 in IRA." We don't want them to say, "Oh, this book was written a long time ago. It must not apply." No, no, we're gonna update it for today's number so that it's still applicable. It still applies. Financial order of operations still works, even though numbers change through time.

• 7:48Brian Preston?

  Yeah, we wanted to make sure we updated all the numbers because I know a lot of you also love to share the book and give it to young people, give it to relatives and friends that you're trying to help them improve without seeming like you're the all-knowing. It's a great way to share the knowledge of how to be good with money. And now it's just gonna have the, the most updated tax laws and information. And it, look, we even went beyond that. I, I shared with you guys that I've shared more about my life, but also updated the case studies. One of the things that the book I attempted to do, there's a section, it's really in the debt section where I talk about car buying. I, I look at cars being so bad for young people and their money, and that is the biggest trap

• 8:31Brian Preston?

  or hole that I feel like young people fall into. But I made a case study in there in the original book on the timing of major purchases matter. And the way I structured that, that case study was I used an example of a Corvette and somebody in their twenties versus the, the actual age that somebody buys Corvettes, which is in their sixties. And for me, it hit because I was the, the nerdy kid in high school who thought when I turned 25, I was gonna go out there and buy a Corvette. But I don't think that's most people's dream.

• 9:03Speaker 04

  That's not what most of you are aspiring to do.

• 9:04Brian Preston?

  So I felt like I missed the mark a little bit in the first book because I was really trying to write the definitive story or case study that would convince people to not fall into the trap of making bad decisions with cars. I'm glad I got another bite at the apple because I got this one much, much better where I said, instead of using like a, the timing of purchases with a Corvette, I did it with a luxury SUV. Because even, I think I shared with you guys, when I bought or leased the car that I give more examples on, that dealership that I was at, I remember there was a couple that was in their thirties that was buying the, or leasing the exact same car. And they had little kids. They're running around. And I remember thinking, "Holy cow,

• 9:49Brian Preston?

  this is a horrible decision for them." Yes, she is going to look awesome and cool to people who don't care about her money whatsoever, but this is a horrible decision that she is making for the family, her and her husband are making. So I, I put a much better case study on the timing of major purchases that I think will really hit, hit people and hopefully be even more motivating to understand the traps of, of, of the car you buy and those type of decisions you make.

• 10:16Speaker 04

  And look, if you wanna, if you wanna know whether or not he discloses in the book what the actual make and model of the car is, you're gonna have to pick up a copy to find out. You're gonna have to figure out if it's in there or not.

• 10:29Brian Preston?

  Also, I talk more, Bo and I have been busy. You know, the company's grown. We've made more, you know, I've learned more about money. I mean, that's like I said, so I've tried anything I learned. Hopefully you guys can tell I have a no hypocrisy, but also a transparency policy. I try to, if I've learned something, I want you guys to know it. So I've updated that stuff in the book and shared more what I've learned. I even have a whole section on what I've learned about- Psychology and the way you can ruminate and be your own worst enemy when it comes to financial decision making. I even leaned into that to update some of that content. Also, how to be a better steward with your resources. You know, Bo and I hang out. We're always trying to figure out money is no more than a tool.

• 11:10Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 11:11Brian Preston?

  And so if you, if I can tell you how to squeeze it the most to get the most happiness, fulfillment, but also how to be a better person that's making the world a little bit better. I'm going to share that stuff as much as I can. And I've kind of updated that. And then this is still going to be the wealth building framework we believe in. So it's, it's the financial order of operations. So I'd invite everybody out there. I know you've gone on this journey with me once and I thank you, thank you, thank you. It's even better. So, and now it's even going to be just bendy and paperback, which means it's going to be more approachable.

• 11:42Speaker 04

  It's gonna be bendy. Big, big improvement, obviously.

• 11:46Speaker 05

  We should have listed that as a feature.

• 11:47Brian Preston?

  Let me share what I mean by that though.

• 11:48Speaker 05

  Now in a bendable version.

• 11:49Speaker 04

  Now it's bendy, obviously.

• 11:50Brian Preston?

  I mean, think about it, because a lot of you guys are very generous. Y'all, y'all shared that you're taking this thing to the beach, you're taking on vacation. Do you know how much easier it is to pack a paperback?

• 11:58Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:58Brian Preston?

  Than it is a hardback book. So I, hopefully this thing's going to get a little more, you know, travel opportunity or give it as a gift opportunity. So that's why the official release date is November 10th. And look, I want to go ahead and tell you, because right now, all the websites that you're going to go to, the big sellers like Amazon and so forth, they just have the list price listed on the purchase. But if you notice, there's always an asterisk usually on most of them. And I've confirmed this on, I know it was on Amazon when I was looking at, they have a price guarantee on there that if the price drops, which I'm, you know, I imagine paperbacks are typically known to be much more affordable. They're going to get, they're only going to charge your credit card the lowest price between now and the release. So I just, I tell you that. So if it takes down any resistance

• 12:42Brian Preston?

  that you're worried, what am I paying for this book? You know, I'd love for you to support the cause. Give this thing as a gift. It will help us get the word out because, I mean, look, publishing a book, despite with the comments, you don't make a gazillion dollars doing this.

• 12:57Speaker 04

  I just want to pause there for a moment because some comments are coming like, oh, they're just pushing another book. And Brian, are you, is your wealth built on the back of your book sales? Is that how you've been able to acquire the level of wealth?

• 13:10Brian Preston?

  If you're trying to figure out the chicken or the egg, definitely we had the egg that became a chicken and then the chicken started sharing the knowledge after they had created the success. Because, and that's why I do this really, this is the educator heart that I have, is that I love that something as simple as a book can literally change people's lives. I mean, there were some reviews. I'm not a big crier, so I didn't cry out, but I definitely got the hair to stand up a marm with some of the things you guys have shared because I feel like we're changing people's lives. So I, look, yes, I make a little bit off of these books, but this is not, I think people would be surprised to learn on all

• 13:49Brian Preston?

  the different ways we can make money, publishing is more for nurturing and feeding the soul and making it approachable than it is for. So I was just happy to have another opportunity to, perfection's not the right word, but to at least make things better and improve and share and hopefully have even a bigger impact, because that's where I get a lot of fulfillment and happiness, happiness out of that.

• 14:14Speaker 04

  So the actual release date is November the 10th, but right now, pre-orders are live as of, as of today, like today's the day that pre-orders are live. And so we want you, it's like Brian said, we want you to buy this book. We want you to have a copy of it. We want you to share it with us. We want to get the word out there that there really is a better way to do money. And it's so awesome to us when we see like there, there's a, he's, he's in the medical field, right outside of Clemson. He's like, hey, I just love that I'm able to be an adjunct professor and I can speak to all these. I want to give them copies of this because I want them to know that as soon as they get out of school, as soon as they start, if they can just grasp these concepts, if they can understand how

• 14:57Speaker 04

  money works and they can avoid some of the pitfalls that other of their peers are making and they can, they will change their lives. And that's a cool thing that we hope we have a tool that you can use to impact the lives of folks around you.

• 15:11Brian Preston?

  Yeah. And look, I share all my, I share a lot of mistakes I've made as well, but I do, what I love about this book, and I was trying to, I think, you know, we did a show last week where we mentioned two other books and I said, no, this is in the sweet spot. Because look, I haven't had a huge failure out there. I've just always been really kind of good with money, but I've also been a natural educator, because I love seeing people catch concepts. And that's why I really do this. If you're trying to get anybody to understand how money works from a life living, coming from humble, trying to build and figure out how this all, to do the better thing with money, I think, I think you'll be pleased with what we have in Millionaire Mission. If you don't believe me, go look at the reviews.

• 15:50Speaker 04

  And there are some, Rebi, there are some preorder perks, right? There's some things that are coming.

• 15:55Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 15:56Speaker 04

  They're going to have some, one, and this one is one that you guys have asked for over and over and over again. You've said it, you've mentioned it. With a preorder, you will get exclusive access to the Millionaire Mission merch store. If you don't remember, we got all kinds of cool stuff out there. Coffee mugs and other doodads and stuff. If you want to be able, I don't know the, I don't know the correct technical term there. Oh, yeah. Rebi, did you know?

• 16:19Brian Preston?

  Yeah, she's modeling. I have mine too.

• 16:22Speaker 04

  Ah, Bo. Y'all didn't even tell me. I forgot.

• 16:24Speaker 05

  You had one assignment.

• 16:25Brian Preston?

  Big team, little me. Big team, little me.

• 16:27Speaker 04

  All I did was just, you know.

• 16:28Brian Preston?

  All that bench pressing to fail at the actual moment of execution.

• 16:32Speaker 04

  Seriously, what a, I'm so sorry I brought my kids on the show. My bad. But you get access to the merch store. In addition to that, you get a ticket to Brian's book club after release. Rebi, what's Brian's book club?

• 16:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, Brian's going to be hanging out with just the members of the mission crew, everyone who pre-orders the paperback version of Millionaire Mission. And he's going to be answering your questions. He's going to be talking behind the scenes of the book. He's going to be talking about the updates. So if you want access to a more exclusive, smaller group in a live stream type setting, conversational setting, that's what Brian's book club is.

• 17:08Brian Preston?

  And then also a special role in the Moneyverse Discord channel.

• 17:12Speaker 04

  If you're not in the Discord, you should be in the Discord because it's wild. It's just a wild time.

• 17:16Speaker 05

  There's always people talking in there and it never ceases to amaze me.

• 17:18Speaker 04

  With a bunch of financial mutants.

• 17:20Brian Preston?

  It's even going to drop some of our content today.

• 17:23Speaker 05

  It is. Good tease, good tease.

• 17:26Speaker 04

  And you're, when you are a preorder of the book, you're actually going to have a private Discord channel inside the Moneyverse, where you can talk with other financial mutants about the books. So it's kind of just extending and carrying on that idea of the book club. Because in addition to us preparing information, putting it out there, sharing it with you guys, we want you guys to be able to interact and communicate with one another. And that's just an awesome thing. It's an awesome, awesome thing.

• 17:49Brian Preston?

  So is that called, I mean, because if you're old like me and you remember the movie Office Space, we call that Flare. You know, you should get something on your Discord channel, you go get a little mission crew, you know, icon. So is that the official title? Is Flare or?

• 18:05Speaker 05

  I mean, sure. That works. Yeah.

• 18:06Speaker 04

  Call it Flare. There we go.

• 18:08Speaker 05

  It's an accurate title. You know, I'm so excited about these preorder perks because it speaks to, you know, why do this phase two of Millionaire Mission, phase two of the mission? And it's because our whole purpose of the book was to have a really tangible way, an entry point that you could share with your friends, that you could benefit from yourself as a fan. And this is just accomplishing that mission even more so by getting it out to even more people, making it even more accessible, making it even more up to date, sharing even more of Brian's stories. And so I know that it's a lot of our people who are going to be pre-ordering this. And so as a thank you to helping us

• 18:47Speaker 05

  actually get those numbers, let the, the powers that be see that this book is really purposeful, meaningful, popular. By doing, like pre-ordering lets them know that. And we want to say thank you. That's why we're opening the merch store. That's why Brian's going to be doing extra content for the mission crew. That's why we're trying to connect you on Moneyverse and build that in as a perk. So you can actually get extra value from your purchase of the book and your read through of the book. I'm just really, really grateful to everyone who did that for the original launch and who's going to help us with phase two of this mission, with this paperback launch. And so if you are interested in being a part of this, just go to moneyguy.com/millionairemission. All of the retailers

• 19:30Speaker 05

  where you can purchase from are there linked and also the page where you can cash in on your preorder perks. Once you, once you make your purchase, it's all there, all the information there. Moneyguy.com/millionairemission. I'm really excited for you, Brian. It's going to be good.

• 19:43Brian Preston?

  Let's now, once again, add some value. Let's do, let's do what we're good at and actually answer some questions too.

• 19:49Speaker 04

  We're going to, we're going to get there. But our, some of the comments are just too good in here and I can't help myself. This one, this one person said, hey, will the purchase include the story of Brian's almost fight with a waiter in the parking lot?

• 20:03Speaker 05

  I wish. Maybe that's going to go in book two, whatever that is.

• 20:07Speaker 04

  So good. A lot, you know, a lot of people, you know, it's really heartwarming. A lot of people are like, are we going to do another book tour, another book tour? The fact that you guys like want to hang out with us in person and come out and see each other, you don't know how much that means to us. And to just know that you're willing to do that is huge and it's not lost on us. So we're trying to figure out, are there ways or there are things we can do to make that sort of stuff happen? And so thank you so much for just communicating to us what it is that you find value in, what it is that we can do that could better serve you. Because at the end of the day, that's really what we are here for. We want to load you guys up. It's why we show up every single Tuesday at 10 a.m. to just answer questions. We share a little bit of stuff. We do some fun

• 20:49Speaker 04

  stuff. But at the end of the day, we want to answer the questions that you're curious about, speak to the things that you want our take on. It's why we have an entire team, growing team, out in the wings, collecting your questions. So if you have a question or you have something you want us to weigh in on, make sure you get it in the chat right now. They are not pre-selected, they're not automated. We actually have our people reading your questions, getting them in here. Because we want to load you up. So with that, Creative Director Rebi, I'm going to throw it over to you.

• 21:19Speaker 05

  Awesome. We are going to kick it off with a question from Jonathan V. Are you ready?

• 21:24Speaker 04

  Yes, ma'am.

• 21:26Speaker 05

  It says, what is the best way to redeploy inherited IRAs or Roth IRAs? I'm 36 and have about 80K to withdraw over the next seven years. What do you think?

• 21:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. So for, for those of you who, who are not aware, the way that you have to handle inherited IRAs has changed over the past couple of years. You know, previously, when you inherited IRA, depending on if the person who inherited it from was over required distribution age or under required distribution age, and depending on the answer to that question, would affect how long you had to distribute the assets out of that IRA. Well, as of a few years ago, the laws changed and it said, hey, if you receive an inherited IRA, whether it's Roth or whether it's pre-tax, the entire distribution, the entire IRA has to be fully depleted by the end of the 10th year. And

• 22:14Speaker 04

  Based upon recent guidance as of the last two years, if it's a traditional pre-tax IRA, you also have to take required minimum distributions based on your life expectancy over that 10-year period, and then you have to deplete the whole thing inside that 10-year. And so what used to be a really easy thing to stretch out from a tax perspective, now you kind of have like this, I don't want to call it a tax bomb, but kind of this tax bomb that you have to plan around. Okay, I know that either this year, next year, or fill in the blank between now and the next 10 years, I've got to take this money, I've got to take the tax hit, I've got to figure out how to navigate that. And I think, Jonathan's question is, okay, well, if I have that and I have the IRA, how should I redeploy it? What are the ways that I should use those dollars? How should I think about it?

• 22:57Speaker 04

  Brian, I'm happy to share some like ways that we've done this for clients or thoughts that we've thought through, but when you hear this question, what immediately comes to your

• 23:05Brian Preston?

  mind? Well, there's, there's two things that jump out. First, are you one of the exceptions? Because look, if you are, you know, I have a daughter who's will probably never be able to live on her own, and a lot of special needs or people who have medical challenges and so forth, they're not subject to the 10-year withdrawal rule. So that's the first thing. Now, Jonathan, I'm assuming you're like the, the majority of people, you will be subject. So I would immediately run this thing through a filter of, because you said both inherited IRAs and then said Roth IRAs. The big difference between Roth and inherited is that Roth is growing tax-free. So I love some tax-free growth. So I'm probably going to defer my

• 23:47Brian Preston?

  withdrawals out of that Roth portion as long as possible.

• 23:51Speaker 04

  All the way out to the

• 23:52Brian Preston?

  So I can, so you can wait until the last hour, you know, last moment to pull that money out of the Roth account. So you get maximize the tax-free growth. If you have any cash, you know, any cash flow needs or anything that you want to kind of, you know, streamline or, or, or make it where they're all nice little cube boxes of withdrawals that are coming out over the next seven years, let's do that out of the traditional inherited IRAs that are going to be taxable to you as you pull them out.

• 24:18Speaker 04

  What I would think about specifically over this next seven years is are there any things that are going to happen in the next seven years that might be unique? Meaning, am I going to have lower income years because I'm going to enter into retirement? Or if I'm thinking about changing jobs?

• 24:32Brian Preston?

  He's 36.

• 24:33Speaker 04

  Might I be changing jo- okay, yeah. So might I be changing jobs? Or if we're a two-income household and we're going to go to a one-income household, if any of those things might be happening over the next seven years, ideally, you would want to take distributions from inherited IRA in a lower tax year as opposed to having to take it in a higher tax year. Absent all of those things, it's worth doing the analysis, say, okay, if I wait all the way till the end of year seven, and I take this big tax bomb, even though those dollars grew tax-deferred, if I were to take all of the income in that year, is it going to push me into a higher tax bracket? If the answer to that question is yes, then perhaps I would rather sprinkle it through the next seven years in sort of an equal weighted manner.

• 25:14Speaker 04

  So that way I could stay inside of one tax bracket as opposed to popping into the next one. This is one of those things where if you're trying to figure this out, if you're trying to do tax projections, you're trying to project it out, these are the exact sorts of things that we help our clients figure out. It's why we do annual tax projections, figuring out, okay, what is the appropriate timeline? What's the appropriate strategy? How should we think about that? Because there's a number of different nuances that make personal finance so personal.

• 25:39Brian Preston?

  Well, I mean, in $80,000, there's a chance that depending upon where your income is, you might be able to just maximize that 12% bracket every year. I mean, because that's, that's, that's just no, and I guess that's the advice I'd close it out with, pay attention to where you are in the marginal tax brackets. Remember, marginal is what the next dollar is taxed at. And there's a big jump up, we go from 12% up to 22%. And then we go from 22% to 24%. And that, if you're a married couple, you know, that, that 12% goes all the way up to around $100,000. 22% is, or, you know, is all the way up to a little over $200,000. For single individuals, it comes up to be, you know, right around that 12%

• 26:21Brian Preston?

  gets you up to right around $50,000. And for the 22%, it's a little over $100,000. So pay attention to where the tax brackets are as well.

• 26:30Speaker 04

  If you're sitting out there, you're like, man, Brian, that was awesome that you read all those numbers to me. I wish I had access to something like that. We actually have a Money Guy tax guide. We never talk about it a ton. If you go to moneyguy.com/resources, and you just need like a quick one-page, it's totally free, quick one-page reference. Okay, where are the tax brackets? What are the Roth IRA limits? How much can I put my HSA? How much can I put in my? It's a free thing. Go download the PDF, drop it on your desktop, you know, put it wherever you keep that kind of stuff. It's a great quick reference tool. If you'd like to have access to kind of numbers.

• 27:01Brian Preston?

  And you too can look as nerdy as Brian and Bo.

• 27:03Speaker 04

  I don't know why I got through in there.

• 27:06Speaker 05

  Jonathan V, thank you for the question. In celebration of the paperback launch, I am declaring today a Tumblr day. Now, if you want this Tumblr, you got to go pre-order. But if you want the classic Money Guy Tumblr, Jonathan V, it is your lucky day.

• 27:21Brian Preston?

  That's this one.

• 27:22Speaker 05

  Yes. If you, since we answered your question.

• 27:24Brian Preston?

  Yours just doesn't have the mustache, just like Bo doesn't have mustaches.

• 27:27Speaker 05

  Mustache, uh, optional, not included.

• 27:29Speaker 04

  You know, one of my favorite things about having YouTube content that lives forever, every now and then I'll just get like a little mustache comment on a video from way back when. And I'm just like, right here.

• 27:39Brian Preston?

  Let's be honest, nobody can tell you have mustaches even when you're trying to grow out a mustache.

• 27:43Speaker 04

  What?

• 27:44Brian Preston?

  John's fired.

• 27:45Speaker 04

  Why'd he choose? I'm over here hyping his book.

• 27:48Speaker 05

  I think he's just reading the comments, Bo.

• 27:49Brian Preston?

  It's because I can grow even less facial hair than you. It's all on the relative scale. So, you know, if you, if you're, if you're punching up, you can pick on, it, it, it comes off more self-deprecating than me.

• 28:01Speaker 04

  I don't want to, um, I don't want to derail us too much.

• 28:05Speaker 05

  You have.

• 28:05Speaker 04

  But there's a, there's a, there's a record that needs to be righted here, Brian. And, and you owe me especially, but all of our audience an apology, uh, because I did something a few weeks ago. And I want you to tell them.

• 28:18Brian Preston?

  You cannot tell a story unless you show the picture that you shared with us.

• 28:21Speaker 04

  Uh, I wanted to tell them, uh, me and my girls, we were, we were swimming and I was like, hey, guys, let's see how long we can tread water. Because Mr. Brian doesn't think I can swim. And let's show him. And I'll have you know, and it was me and my two daughters, I treaded water, uh, for 13 minutes. Now, look, that's not impressive. That's not, I'm not, none of, the, the Navy is not calling me saying, hey, we want you to be in our special operations division. But that is somebody that can swim. I just want to be very clear, that's someone who can swim. So I accept your apology. I think it's so great that you wanted to set the record straight here in front of millions of people. Uh, and I, I'm not upset about it.

• 28:57Brian Preston?

  I wish the team had the picture that you share. Did you share that with us? Or did you just show us on your phone? That, because it was, it was out there and it looked like Bo was giving it all he had. I mean, y'all should know.

• 29:09Speaker 05

  I'm seeing some grins on the content too.

• 29:10Brian Preston?

  This thing, he might, he might, he might have made it 13 minutes, but, oh, oh my God, there it is. He's even literally staring at the clock. Lord, please get me out of this thing. Get me, Lord, if you'll help me survive this eight-foot-deep pool for another split second. So if y'all think that looks like a swimmer.

• 29:29Speaker 05

  He made it over 13 minutes when he was fighting for his life.

• 29:31Brian Preston?

  I got some oceanfront property sitting right in the middle of the country.

• 29:35Speaker 04

  13 minutes and six seconds. It was more, and look, I told my girls, I said, hey, girls, we're going to work on this. We're going to get better. We're going to do this more and more. Uh, and so, you know what?

• 29:44Brian Preston?

  Thank you, team. Y'all have made my day. Self-inflicted wound by Bo right there.

• 29:48Speaker 04

  That's wild.

• 29:50Speaker 05

  He shared it. Oh, man. I'm not mad at that tangent at all. Honestly, that ended up in a great place.

• 29:56Brian Preston?

  We need to go, you know what? You and I need to take the ladies to, to the beach again. Because I was, you know, I was, I was in Mexico like two weeks ago.

• 30:05Speaker 04

  Let's go.

• 30:06Brian Preston?

  And I told my wife, I was like, it's amazing. We went with Bo and Jenna on one trip and we have gotten so many fun stories because of that trip. So we should do that again.

• 30:15Speaker 04

  Um, you know what's funny is after this, after I did this and proved that I'm basically Michael Phelps, I was like, I was like, because I'm not, I'm not an efficient treader. And I'll

• 30:24Speaker 05

  Michael Phelps, are you?

• 30:25Brian Preston?

  Dude, look at that picture. It's so good.

• 30:29Speaker 04

  I, I ChatGPT'd like, okay, what's the most efficient way to like tread? And it's like, you know, you kind of sit in a chair, lean back, you do the egg beater. Buddy, I tried, I sink like a rock when I do the egg beater. I am 100% arms on my tread.

• 30:43Brian Preston?

  You might need to do a little more time in the legs.

• 30:45Speaker 04

  It's a thing I got to work on. That's it.

• 30:47Brian Preston?

  Leg days. Quit squipping those, skipping those leg days.

• 30:50Speaker 05

  Well, Jonathan V, if you would like a Tumblr, email [email protected]. We'd love to send you one.

• 30:56Brian Preston?

  We might need to frame that picture.

• 30:58Speaker 05

  We might need to. I think that's going to go on the history wall in the office.

• 31:03Speaker 04

  What, can I tell you what's amazing? You know, my wife, who's like, she's my biggest fan, but she's the one that took that picture. I didn't snap that picture. So I think she would sit there thinking, if, I need one more picture of him before he's gone. Let me just snap it real quick. Oh.

• 31:19Speaker 05

  All right. Ready for the next question?

• 31:21Brian Preston?

  I know you weren't wearing sunglasses in that picture either.

• 31:23Speaker 04

  Fool me once.

• 31:24Brian Preston?

  Bo in sunglasses in the, body of water is assured loss.

• 31:29Speaker 04

  I was like, all right, $100 Oakleys? Or am I grabbing that buoy?

• 31:33Speaker 05

  Or my life.

• 31:34Speaker 04

  And I grabbed the buoy.

• 31:35Speaker 05

  All right. Next personal finance question is from the Dinklebergs. Capital, B-I-N-K.

• 31:45Brian Preston?

  Oh my gosh.

• 31:45Speaker 05

  Everyone's laughing. That's the username.

• 31:50Brian Preston?

  Y'all are so bad.

• 31:51Speaker 04

  That stands for dual income, no kids. That's what that stands for.

• 31:55Speaker 05

  It's kind of clever and funny. It is funny. Was I not supposed to read it?

• 32:02Speaker 00

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• 32:30Speaker 01

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• 32:39Speaker 02

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

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• 33:00Brian Preston?

  Now you're fine. I think this just shows how potty humor is still funny at all ages.

• 33:07Speaker 05

  Okay. We're 38 and 37, 114K household income, 235K net worth. Would it make sense to buy a house even if it meant that we might never reach 25% savings rate? Buying would cost $500 plus per month more than renting.

• 33:28Speaker 04

  I mean, man, I don't, I don't know. I don't know your income. But one of the first things I'd do before I even do the mathematical exercise, I would do the goal exercise. Like, hey, what are our financial goals? What do we want our money to be able to allow us to do? And if homeownership is one of those things, homeownership is something that you guys value and you want to have, I'd say, okay, great. If we want to own a home, what financial decisions would we have to make that would allow us to do that thing? Okay? If we do that, what is the opportunity cost of it? Maybe what that means, instead of being able to save 25%, we're only able to save 15%. At a 15% savings rate, based on a $235,000 net worth, based on being age 38 and 37,

• 34:12Speaker 04

  we might not retire at 55. Rather, we might have to work until 65. But we're okay working until 65 because we love what we do and we're not planning on early retirement, yada, yada, yada. Is that a trade off that we're okay with? And if the answer is yes, then there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing that's set like 25% is a goal that you should have to give yourself the most amount of flexibility until it makes sense for you to have a specialized plan. You may be amazed to hear this, but a lot of times when you guys reach up and say, hey, guys, I'm ready to take the relationship to the next level. We'll have our initial call. We'll go through your accounts. We'll go through this and we'll go through your saving. And one of the things we might uncover in our very early meetings is, hey, I know you're saving 25%. I know you're saving that because we tell you to

• 34:55Speaker 04

  save 25%. Do you realize that you've done a lot of work? That you can either keep saving 25% and you're actually be able to retire a number of years before you thought, or you can actually back your savings rate down to 17%, 18% and you're going to be okay. 25% is a wonderful, generalized solution until your financial situation reaches the place, reaches the place where you should have a specialized answer to how much you should be saving.

• 35:20Brian Preston?

  Dinkle, I'm gonna be honest with you. You're 38 and 37, which you've done, you've done good because your household income's 114,000. You have 235 net worth. I don't know how much of that's liquid. You know, versus how much is emergency reserves and so forth, but we, you know, we have a loose goal that by the time you reach 40, we want you to have three times your income. So that's $342,000. We're almost $100,000 short. So for you to go into, we really want to buy a house to the point that we're going to, on a perpetual basis, be $500 a month behind what we should be doing.

• 35:59Brian Preston?

  I think that's going to set you up for long-term disappointment on what the terminal or use value of your assets are in retirement. What I'd prefer for you to do is take a moment in time and say, look, there is, because we even are, you know, our, our down payment rule is three to 5% of your purchase, but that doesn't mean that that's where you're trapped at. If you look at this and it becomes a math equation and you say, what if we as a family for the next two years, we did either, whether it's side hustles, whether we cleaned out the closets in the basement or attic or wherever storage unit that we have, and we tried to come up with every absolute penny that we could to where we put down a significant

• 36:44Brian Preston?

  enough amount to where instead of being behind $500 a month, we just front-end loaded that by sacrifice or, or whatever we had to do, you know, come together on this goal. So then we can still reach all of our financial goals because homeownership's great, but it's not the end all to where I don't want you to, I want you to live a life to where you own your time and live your best life without regret. I don't want you to be house rich, life poor because you just have that this goal is going to make things so much better and then be disappointed. I'd rather you get hyper focused, figure out how you can make the math work and it'll still allow you to catch up to where your financial goals need to be.

• 37:29Speaker 05

  Fantastic. Well.

• 37:30Brian Preston?

  That's, that's the hard part. It's easy to give out rules. It's hard to make personal finance personal and you bring it back into your life. But I would say use the motivation to, to, to make it happen. That's where the mindset kicks in.

• 37:44Speaker 05

  Everyone in the wings, brace yourself because I'm going to say the username again. The Dinklebergs. Thank you for your question. We'd love to send you a Tumblr. Just email [email protected]. Everybody got a kick out of your username. So thank you for that too.

• 37:58Speaker 04

  Throwback to the fairly odd parents. Had no idea.

• 38:01Speaker 05

  That's what I thought it was. I was just like.

• 38:02Speaker 04

  With all the chat, I was like, I gotta go figure out where this came from. Now I know.

• 38:06Speaker 05

  Fairly odd parents.

• 38:07Speaker 04

  Now I know.

• 38:09Speaker 05

  All right. Next question is from Fortin. Here's a foo.

• 38:15Speaker 04

  Yo, that's a Dr. Seuss thing. I got that one.

• 38:17Brian Preston?

  I hear it.

• 38:18Speaker 05

  Good morning. My parents are considering retirement around age 55 and are worried about marketplace health insurance costs. What are important things to consider and would you consider cost sharing?

• 38:32Speaker 04

  So one of the, one of the things worth noting is that pre Affordable Care Act, it was a real concern when early retirees wanted to retire. It was really hard to get health insurance because you could have pre-existing conditions and all this other stuff. And then the healthcare landscape did change, but one of the things that came out of that legislation is early retirees now have a much easier job getting coverage in place than they were able to previously. And I think a lot of people, when they're thinking about early retirement, they really are so worried that marketplace coverage and healthcare costs are going to be like this very, very big boogeyman. And I don't want to minimize it. It is expensive. It's often not coverage that was commiserable

• 39:14Speaker 04

  or comparable to when you were working, but for the majority of clients that we're like helping navigate, helping put together a plan, it's not something that is, it's not an insurmountable mountain. So one of the very, one of the things you can do is there's a number of, of services out there. There's a number of providers where you can go out to healthcare.gov and you can start looking at, okay, what sort of plans are available based on, you know, the doctors that I use, the medication that I use, where I live, what sort of marketplace plans would be available to me? And you can begin getting an idea of where the costs are going to be. And what you have to do is if you're going to retire at 55 and you know, you got to bridge that all the way till 65 and you become Medicare eligible, you just got to factor

• 39:57Speaker 04

  it in as part of your budget. Like, okay, I looked at the cost of, of plans that would likely make sense for my family and this is what it's going to be. And it's just going to be one of the expenses that I have in retirement, no different than if I have groceries and utilities and mortgage or whatever those things may be. And you just have to factor it in. What I want you to do though is do the planning ahead of time. Don't get to 55, say, I'm going to retire. Okay, I'll do Cobra and then I'll figure it out. I think that's when people get themselves in a mess.

• 40:26Brian Preston?

  Look, when the marketplace came on the scene, it at least gives you a backstop to know you can go price it and know where it is. Now, the problem is, is that like, I know here in Tennessee, a lot of the providers dropped out, you know, so there is some type of coverage. So I would use it as a backstop as worst case scenario. If first, see if you qualify for subsidies. If that's a big, from a financial calculation standpoint, if your assets are structured in a way and the income, the subsidies are something you definitely need to take into account. But if you price out a subsidy and then you start looking at the coverage, don't sleep on the fact that there are a lot of, like here in Tennessee, and I'll just say it because

• 41:08Brian Preston?

  I don't get anything from it, but I just see a lot, like there's membership groups or, or trade associations or they're like Farm Bureau. A lot of people, these are, the, the, these are programs that are set up that a lot of people use them for dental. They use them for their medical and so forth, and they're pretty competitive. Now I will tell you, they do, it's the pre-existing condition. Once again, if you have pre-existing marketplace is probably going to be where you end up. But if you're, if you're healthy and you, you know, this is something that you can consider doing that. And you can also, just like you had the question of cost sharing. We see people use the, the med shares and the other things out there where you can essentially create exactly what insurance companies have done historically is that you get a pool

• 41:53Brian Preston?

  of people and y'all are now doing this together. The big asterisk always on that is the pre-existing conditions. And then we've even had issues where. We've known people who've used these and there was either not the right documentation or some type of communication issue where you thought you were covered and you went and did a procedure and then all of a sudden the med chair says, whoa, whoa, whoa, we didn't agree to this.

• 42:20Speaker 04

  And that's frightening.

• 42:21Brian Preston?

  And then that can be very scary because you know how medical procedures are very expensive and you know, especially when you get the retail, you have to figure out how you're going to navigate that without all the protections that insurance companies with the discounts because that's what a lot of insurance companies, they're not really paying for anything. The more you're paying for the access to their discounted pricing. But I would go through, it's not something that is insurmountable, exactly what Bo said, but you need to budget accordingly. I mean, it is not cheap. So when you're running, putting on your 3D glasses, figuring out your retirement plan to make sure you got it covered, just make sure you put in very conservative assumptions and you're going to be okay. It will get you through this, you know, you'll make it to 65, but, but just go in with your eyes

• 43:06Brian Preston?

  open. This is definitely going to be something you have to, to, to measure twice, cut once and do a lot of homework on.

• 43:10Speaker 04

  And not, not knowing your parents' financial situation or circumstance. One of the interesting things and it's gotten a lot of, a lot of publicity and a lot of hype. It's one of the reasons why Barista Fire is such a, because 55 is retiring early, whether your parents think about being part of the fire movement or not, that is an early retirement. A lot of folks will say, I'm going to retire. I don't want the same stress. I don't want the same obligation, the job I've been doing. But what I might do is I might go work at a job where I can work fewer hours, less stress, whatever, but it makes me benefits eligible, where I could go get health insurance coverage. You gotta make sure that you work with an employer that provides it and that your actual hours worked qualify for that. But even that, if you find the costs of paying for insurance on your own are perhaps insurmountable from an early, early retirement standpoint, you've got really two options. I figure out

• 43:55Speaker 04

  another way to get health insurance, like get another job, or I decide to retire later. It's worth working through that. What?

• 44:04Brian Preston?

  I thought of that swim picture again.

• 44:05Speaker 04

  Hey, but you know what? You know what? I'm taking this as one, he said, I thought of that swim picture. He didn't say I thought of that Bo can't swim picture. I thought of that drowning picture. No, I thought of that swimming picture because Bo can swim for 13 minutes and six seconds. So.

• 44:25Speaker 05

  Wow. Well, Forten, here's a foo. If you would like a Money Guy Tumblr.

• 44:31Brian Preston?

  Such a great thing.

• 44:32Speaker 05

  Email winner at moneyguy.com. I'm really concerned that we're making a game of this username thing. What if I just start changing?

• 44:39Brian Preston?

  You should be rewarded for creativity.

• 44:41Speaker 05

  I, I, I do technically agree. With that, it is time for our new segment, which I am very, very excited about called Moneyverse Milestones. We've talked a lot about the Moneyverse, our Discord server a lot on the show today, and we have a channel in there that is all about celebrating milestones. We talk about different benchmarks, different goals, personal goals, Money Guy milestone markers, all of those things on the show a lot. So we created a channel and a place where people can actually go in there and have people that get it, that can celebrate with them, that can speak into their life. And yes, Brian, he has a question, raising his hand.

• 45:22Brian Preston?

  Are we going to, because they've reached milestones, are we going to give them a Tumblr?

• 45:26Speaker 05

  I love it. Today's Tumblr day. So sure. Let's do it. Let's do it. I will read out the username so they know.

• 45:32Speaker 04

  Can I tell you just one thing I love about this so much? It's so unique about the, about this community that is, we often don't get to celebrate that kind of stuff. Like, like, how many times did you hit millionaire status and you go to your neighbor and be like, hey neighbor, I'm a millionaire now. You just can't do, hey, my income finally hit this threshold. Hey, I maxed out my 401k. You just don't get to do that. And, and, and obvious, for obvious reasons why we don't do that publicly. But when we can do those sort of things in the context of other people that are navigating the same sort of stuff, it's kind of awesome. And it's a unique place to be able to communicate that kind of stuff. And I just, I love it. I think it's wonderful.

• 46:08Speaker 05

  Yes. And we heard that from you. Like, we would sometimes hear that in the comments or like on Reddit, like, oh, I don't really have anybody to share this with, but I hit this milestone. So that's why we did it. All right. So let's dive into the first one. Milestone one is hitting 350K net worth. This is from Always Be Curious. The update says, I update my financial accounts in YNAB every six months and rebalance my portfolio. Today, with growth, I crossed 350K net worth, 380K invested. I still have some student loans at 45 years old, but those will be paid off this fall. I was trying to figure out why this particular number felt so big when 250K was just, you know, dot, dot, dot.

• 46:53Speaker 05

  It didn't feel as big. And they say, I think it's because I took out 350K in student loans.

• 47:00Speaker 04

  How much?

• 47:01Speaker 05

  350K.

• 47:03Speaker 04

  See, this is why, okay.

• 47:05Speaker 05

  The swing feels really good. Yes, I was fooish because I started my plan before I found Money Guy and thought of my interest as low interest. At my income and less time than many, I kept investing, maxing my 401k and Roth IRA while pouring everything else at my debt, about 8K per month. And I'm glad I did. And I mean, I'm glad I didn't miss the returns of the last few years. I'm also glad I found the Money Guy to help me focus on those student loans. Next is student loan payoff and that one I'm really excited about. Also, thanks to the Moneyverse for being supportive.

• 47:41Brian Preston?

  You know, what's, what's amazing, I can tell you why I think 350 hits a psychological mark too, is that we've shown content to where the first, like, it'll, it'll take you almost like two decades, and if he's in his mid 40s, to get to that first like half million. But then the next five years or whatever can, you, you will build your compounding growth and the army of dollars will do the work really over the next five to 10 years. It took you 20 years to do. So I think that's what you're feeling, Always Be Curious, is that you're, the compounding is starting to grow upon itself and you've had compounding interest working against you with the student loans and you're about to have that extinguished. So now you're getting the dividends. And imagine what's

• 48:24Brian Preston?

  going to happen to Always Be Curious when he says he's going to pay off these student loans in the fall. I bet a lot of those resources, I want you to celebrate a little bit, but also let's, if you can keep piling it in, you're going to, instead of feeling behind you, go be right where you need to be.

• 48:41Speaker 04

  I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope you've been tracking your annual net worth. Because one of the beautiful things, you said that you had $350,000 of student loan and you have chipped away at it, knocked away at it and chipped away at it. So now I think you only have 30 or 40,000 left. That's insane. Like, that's something, that is a milestone worth celebrating. And at the same time, you've been able to build up your net worth on the other side. You've got $380,000 investing. And one of the great things about investing and building wealth is that the bigger the numbers get, the bigger the numbers get. What you're going to recognize, if we have a year where the market makes 10% on 380, that's amazing. And, and then you have 10% on 500 and then 10% on 750 and 10% on a million.

• 49:24Speaker 04

  And it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. What an awesome, man, I would, I would love to see your net worth template showing where you started, $350,000 in the hole to now today being $380,000 or $350,000 the positive. That's awesome. Good, great work.

• 49:42Brian Preston?

  So Always Be Curious, foo foo.

• 49:44Speaker 04

  Foo foo. Is that like instead of like chin chin?

• 49:48Brian Preston?

  Yeah, instead of chin chin, I said foo foo. You never know. You know, you never know.

• 49:52Speaker 04

  They don't all stick. So we just try it, we see where it goes.

• 49:54Brian Preston?

  We try to see where magic is.

• 49:55Speaker 05

  Always be curious. Foo foo, as we say around here.

• 49:58Brian Preston?

  When in doubt, just show that picture of Bo swimming.

• 50:03Speaker 05

  My goodness. All right. We've got a couple more. Milestone two.

• 50:08Brian Preston?

  Allegedly swimming.

• 50:09Speaker 05

  This is a milestone for being on the same page from Jake S. It says, hey folks, my wife and I, over the past five years, more like four and a half years, were able to pay off $103,000 in high interest rate student loans at 6% plus.

• 50:25Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 50:26Speaker 05

  This was done with, with having a combined income of less than 100K for three of those years. I still have 24K in student loans sitting at 4%, but will be doing minimum monthly payments on those for about 10 years. Originally, my monthly payments would have been $1,000 plus, but now they will be $240. This really is a post about how amazing my wife has been for being on the same page with me, trying to be frugal, as frugal as possible and send everything we could at those loans with a wedding and buying our condo. I like a lot about that. Man, what do you guys have to say?

• 51:04Speaker 04

  Just, people ask us all the time, hey, I'm, I'm, I'm getting married. What's the most important thing that my spouse and I should do to prepare for marriage? Or hey, I've been married for 10 years. What's the most important thing? Hey, we're about to retire. What's the most important? And it's interesting, in all of those various stages, the answer surprisingly stays the same. Communication, communication, communication. If you can, your spouse can be on the same page in terms of how you make financial decisions, the priorities that you have and how you're going to attack those priorities. Man, it is an awesome, awesome, awesome ride. Even when those priorities change, your priorities in your twenties might be, oh, let's pay off this debt. Great, we're going to do that.

• 51:48Speaker 04

  And then in your 50s, it might be, hey, let's retire early. And you do that. And when you're able to do that stuff together, it's amazing how efficient and how effective a household can be. Now, when you think about the contrast to that, we see it all the time. One of the number one things that people end up splitting up over, one of the biggest points of contention in a lot of marriages is finances. So if you can remove that or work through that, holy cow, it just makes it work so much better.

• 52:18Brian Preston?

  Yeah, I mean, this is the part, I mean, I think a lot of people, you get married, you got all the lovey dovey stuff, but I can tell you, if you do this right, it's the, it's kind of the scars are the things that you overcome in the marriage especially. That's why, because Bo said it right, is that for a lot of people, money becomes an element of conflict. But I mean, if you get, it's kind of like going in the trenches of warfare. And if you are together and you survive, you come out the other side, these are things that strengthen the bond. And that's what I get excited is that you should celebrate these things. And then make sure, by the way, five love languages, make sure you're sharing these, you know, affirm and share and actually turn these

• 53:00Brian Preston?

  into words to let your spouse, don't just assume they know. Make sure that you're actually giving them the words of to affirm their, you know, how far y'all have come, how much you appreciate them. And I think that you'll, you'll see that, man, this could, this could be something to celebrate that just makes the marriage that much better.

• 53:17Speaker 04

  And communication is hard and being on the same page is hard and, and pursuing financial goals is hard, but it's worth it. It's worth the work. It's worth the conversations. It's worth the tension. It's worth the like, all those things. Cause when you come out on the other side of, you get a little back and say, holy cow, look what we did. Remember when we had that $103,000 of high interest student loan debt at 6% plus? And remember how we said, okay, we're not going to go on the trips. We're not going to go out to eat. We're not going to do this. We're not, and we knocked that, hey, we did that together. Man, if we could do that over the last four and a half years, imagine what we can do together over the next 45 years. Oh, I think it's awesome. I love that.

• 53:56Brian Preston?

  Words of affirmation.

• 53:57Speaker 05

  That's great. All right. One more milestone. Number three is a fitness goal hit from diligentdog99. This one's for you.

• 54:06Brian Preston?

  Best, best thing I just heard, dog. Dog. Go dogs.

• 54:11Speaker 05

  In the past 18 ish months, I've been on a huge grind to lower my body fat percentage and become more fit overall.

• 54:18Speaker 04

  Love it.

• 54:19Speaker 05

  Today is the first measurement I've had with sub 20%, now down to 17.2% from my 32% starting point.

• 54:27Brian Preston?

  Goodness gracious.

• 54:27Speaker 05

  And he ends it with, health is wealth, which I know you guys love.

• 54:31Speaker 04

  I bet you everything else feels good. I, I, I bet your joints feel good. I bet you wake up better. I bet your sleep is better. By taking that active role over the last 18 months, I would be willing to bet, not having any context here, that your quality of life has improved drastically. Cause going from 32% body fat percent down to 17 is a huge change. Kudos to you. Again, another thing that's not easy. It's not easy to do that. I'm sure there's a lot of things. You had to move your body. You probably had to feed your body differently than you were feeding it. And you probably had to rest your body and focus on getting yourself the recovery that you need. But when you put all those three things together and you started seeing changes, you literally turned into a different

• 55:15Speaker 04

  person. Ah, I think that's awesome.

• 55:17Brian Preston?

  Yeah. I mean, I love, cause I love how you close it with health is wealth. Cause we always make the correlation that a lot of things with your fitness and your health overall is very similar to wealth building is that small decisions can have huge results. And kudos to you, 18 months creating this. That's just something definitely to be celebrated. I love that because money is nothing more than a tool.

• 55:38Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 55:38Brian Preston?

  And look, we know a lot of people, one of the heartbreaking things about doing this for a living is that you do see people who have this goal. They think when they reach a million, two million, that they're going to live their best life. And I'm here to tell you, you've got to make sure you do things right to where you enjoy every decade that you're on this planet. And a lot of that is making sure that you're focusing on your health, the memories, the blossoming memories with loved ones. Cause it's a complete package. You know, it's all about a little bit of sacrifice or giving a little bit of deferred gratification to get exactly to know what's important to you to create happiness. And I, and I love that you, that you shared that with us.

• 56:15Speaker 04

  That's awesome.

• 56:16Speaker 05

  I love that.

• 56:17Speaker 04

  32 to 17 is a big change.

• 56:18Brian Preston?

  Yeah.

• 56:19Speaker 04

  That's a big, big change.

• 56:20Speaker 05

  So always be curious, Jake S. and diligentdog99. If you guys would like a Tumblr, since you were featured in our money verse milestone segment, just email winner at moneyguy.com. And if you want to share your milestones, just for the purpose of sharing and community and affirming each other and, you know, staying motivated, go to moneyguy.com/moneivers to join our Discord channel. And you have a chance to maybe be featured in one of these segments in the future. Cause we love to celebrate with you, whether it's on Discord or here on the live stream. So thank you so much for sharing with us and participating in that milestone channel. We love it. With that, let's go back to some more financial

• 57:05Speaker 05

  questions from the chat. We've got one from jram86. It says, I'm turning 40. My wife is 35. Should we target three times our household income saved this year or adjust the goal because of our five year age gap? Current income is 390K at the moment and have about 770K in retirement. Thank you in advance.

• 57:26Speaker 04

  I am so glad that you read all of those acronyms. Cause I was like, I don't know what that means.

• 57:33Speaker 05

  TYIA. I'm pretty sure that means thank you in advance. Pretty confident.

• 57:36Speaker 04

  770K in retirement, 390,000 income. One, huge shovel. That's not a small sum of income.

• 57:44Speaker 05

  It's awesome.

• 57:45Speaker 04

  And your question is like, okay, should we shoot for three times? And where, where jram is coming up with that. So for those of you don't know is we say that by the time you hit 40 years of age, your goal should be three times your annual income saved up in liquid investments. Uh, but it's just a rule of thumb. It's like a, it's like a, hey, this is the track trajectory you should be on. At 40, you're probably beginning to figure out what you want the rest of your working career to look like. Don't want to work until 65, don't work until 55. What's kind of spending are we going to have? So you should have some sort of metric. If you've not defined the finish line, you should at least start being like, able to kind of see it. And so I would argue where you should be at 40, the milestones are super helpful, but this might be the time when it makes

• 58:28Speaker 04

  sense to figure, okay, well, what's our actual number? What's the actual number that we need to get to by the time we get to 60, by the time we get to 65, so we can live the life we want to live on our terms, the way we want to live it. And where are we today? Well, based on where we are today and based on the way that we're saving, are we going to be able to accomplish that? Or do we need to perhaps save more? Do we need to perhaps do more? If you're just trying to figure out a rule of thumb, I don't think it's crazy to average out your ages. One of you's 40, one of you 35, meet at 37. I'd give you, I'd give you three years to hit that metric if I had, because I don't know how fast their income has moved. I don't know how long they've earned.

• 59:06Brian Preston?

  No, that, there's the better question. Look, I'm going to play the part of Sergeant Slaughter here.

• 59:10Speaker 04

  Why are you just?

• 59:11Brian Preston?

  Go by 40. You'll 40, you don't get to change. You, just because you married a younger spouse, doesn't get you out of your obligations.

• 59:18Speaker 05

  This is not a cheat code.

• 59:19Brian Preston?

  No. 40 is the age that you base off. Here's the better question though. How long have you made 390? Because if you made 100,000 and 200,000, then all of a sudden 390, I'd rather you average the last three years of income to figure out what the multiple is versus you trying to take a shortcut just because you married a younger spouse and try to average.

• 59:42Speaker 04

  Where'd you get shortcut? Where's shortcut?

• 59:44Brian Preston?

  Okay, let's, let's, let's, let's take your logic here. And you get, who's somebody that's in the public that's, you know, got like a super young spouse? You're not all of a sudden going to take a 50 year old to a 25 year old and go, oh, you just saved for a 32 year old. You'll be okay.

• 1:00:01Speaker 04

  I don't want people to be discouraged because they didn't hit, and look, three times your annual income is not an arbitrary number.

• 1:00:07Brian Preston?

  Older spouse.

• 1:00:08Speaker 04

  But it's somewhat arbitrary.

• 1:00:09Brian Preston?

  Older spouse.

• 1:00:12Speaker 04

  It's somewhat arbitrary.

• 1:00:13Speaker 05

  Agree, disagree, want to fight?

• 1:00:14Speaker 04

  Well, we're almost the fight love. We're going to fight in the water.

• 1:00:17Brian Preston?

  Older spouse, but the income can be, income can be leveled out by the last three years. If you had a big jump in income.

• 1:00:24Speaker 04

  Completely agree. But what I, what I want you to really define is where should you guys be? Again, three times your annual income is more just like a, you know what I mean? It's, it's like a spot check. It's not an actual target that you should be hitting unless it's on your trajectory towards financial independence. I never want people to be discouraged about, because they got $770,000 saved up in retirement at 40 and 35. By any objective measure, that's fantastic. Are you quite at the three times? Not just yet. But again, there are some other things at play. There is an age difference, which fine, don't average

• 1:01:05Speaker 04

  it. I don't care. There is an income trajectory change. I'm saying, I want you to define what is actually the number that you guys should be at? And what decision do you need to make to move in that direction?

• 1:01:16Brian Preston?

  Oh, you're just violent. All of a sudden I can swim and he gets all aggressive and stuff.

• 1:01:25Speaker 05

  On that note, thank you so much for joining us for this special live stream with a new segment with a new announcement of phase two of the millionaire mission. Be sure to go to moneyguy.com/millionairemission to order your paperback, preorder your paperback so you can be part of those perks if you're interested. And also just help us get that book into even more people in the future who need to know what's in there. It's that same framework we know and love, but revised, updated, new stories. We're very excited. Thanks so much for being a part of that. We really, really appreciate it.

• 1:01:55Brian Preston?

  And thank y'all for all the support. Like I said, you know, there's a lot of insecurity, a lot of fear. Are people going to, is this book going to do what you hope it's going to do? And y'all kind of answered that question with the first edition. So I'm happy that we get to even make it better. And I thank y'all for going on this journey with us. Cause I know without my financial mutants, this thing wouldn't be shared the way it is. And it wouldn't have had the success that it had. So y'all, y'all deserve a lot of that credit. And I really appreciate that. That's what I love about what we get to do. It really keeps me coming every Tuesday, every Friday, as we're recording the Making a Millionaire. It's really exciting what we get to do. I feel like we, in our own little way, are making the world a little bit better place. So thank you for being part of our journey.

• 1:02:37Brian Preston?

  I'm your host, Brian, joined by Mr. Bo, Money Guy team. Out.

• 1:02:41Speaker 05

  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.

• 1:03:17Speaker 06

  Hey, Bo's here. On your next track, listen for the decisions. Distortion on the bass, the vocal right up front. Every choice deliberate. With Bo's, you'll hear it all. Your music deserves Bo's.

• 1:03:34Speaker 07

  If you're building AI agents, you should check out Strands Agents. It's an open source SDK for Python and TypeScript. The idea is simple. Give a model some tools, let it decide what to call and when, and loop until it's done. No chain convicts, no graph orchestration, and works with any model provider. It's also open source and built and tested for production agents. Get started at strandsagents.com.