Alright, so now let’s think about this next stage. Now they’re going to go into their 30s, and we often talk about how the 30s is the messy middle. We talk about, well, when you actually look at the life events, when you actually look at the things that happened in this decade, it is wild. I mean, not only are they doing the things that we know they have to do, like they have to buy cars and replace cars, but they decide at age 30 they’re going to go and start their family. They’re going to have their first kid, and they’re going to begin to grow the Manny and Maddie Enterprise. You know, they even have their second kid just not too far in the distant future. But then we even throw some life at them with roof repairs. Spouse goes back to work, you know, because you have a moment where the spouse, because of childcare, gets so expensive, takes some time out of that. What I find interesting, we call it the messy middle because you’re both short on time, you’re short on money. If you’re in your 20s and you’re watching ahead, don’t get scared. It’s going to be okay. Life’s going to come at you, but you’re going to make it through it because the days are long, but the years are short. And if you’re in your 40s and beyond, you’re looking at this going, “Yep, I remember this.” But I’m just telling you, it’s okay to embrace the messy middle. You will make it through this season, and you’re going to recognize there are some decisions you have to make, and they’re not always easy decisions, but you can do it. You can make them well. We already mentioned, alright, age 30, they have the first kid, they buy a car, a kid, a car. They start saving for their home. This probably means the budget is going to be very tight. The messy middle is real. But then they get to 32 and they say, “Hey, you know what? It’s time for us to buy a house. We’re about to have a second child. We want to continue to grow this family, but we need a place to live.” But what they do is they recognize, “Hey, we are financial mutants. We’re going to buy a house the way that a financial mutant would buy the house.” So this is what they do. They make sure they choose a location they know they’re going to be in for at least five to seven years. They also have the goal that they want to put a down payment down, but they know they probably aren’t going to be able to do 20%. Not at this age, not at this stage. It’s a first-time house. So they’re going to shoot for three to 5% of the house cost as a down payment, not the 20% conventional, because it is hard to get into a home these days. But they know that whatever house they buy, whatever down payment they go with, they know they have to keep their total housing cost below 25% of their gross income. And when they actually walk through the numbers, they’re able to buy a reasonably affordable house even following these rules. Yeah, and I think it’s, we get them in the house, you know, they’ve already had their first child, and then shortly after the house, the second child comes, and they’re like, “Holy cow, childcare is eating us alive.” So it, they make the hard decision at age 33 that one of them is just going to step away from their career because they have so much going out. And I think this happens to a lot of people. Like, man, you know, the decision to catch the memories but also to stop the money that’s flowing out for childcare is maybe one of us just works from home, or one of us just stays at home with the kids. You see this happen all the time, and they leaned into that. Now, there’s something to mention here, right? You know, they bought a house together, they bought a house based on both their incomes, and they followed the money guy rules to buying a house. But when one spouse decides to stay home, it puts them in a really unique position. The home now comes 35% of their gross income because of this life decision they made. This is not uncommon. This happens to a lot of you. You write us all the time, saying, “Hey, we had these great plans, these great ideas, but then life happened.” It’s okay. We’re going to show you that even with that, you can continue to build wealth. You can continue to make sound financial life decisions even as life progresses on. And in their story, they get to age 35, and this wonderful new house that they bought that they loved, that was amazing, all of a sudden now it needed some repairs done. It needed a roof repair that immediately they had to go dip into their emergency fund to go pay for, ’cause sometimes when life happens, it happens hard, and it happens all at once. And a lot of times, it kicks you in the teeth when it happens. But because they know they’re making the decisions they’re supposed to make, they’re able to weather that storm. They’re able to be prepared for it. Now, I like to put a little ray of sunshine in there, and the fact that, ’cause it is some bad news, not only ’cause you think about when they were around 33 that they, not only did they now have 35% going to housing, they looked at their cars and, like, “Man, we need to replace that one, but we’re going to put it off.” Yep, we’re going to wait. But then you get the roof on it, it’s like, “Oh my gosh, how many more bad news things can come our way?” But, and that’s probably around 36, they make the decision, you know, look, one of them’s about to go to, one’s in preschool, why don’t we go ahead and, the spouse that was staying home went back to work. And then you think about age 37, the second child went to kindergarten. So now it’s a little bit easier. Time is now, they’re getting a little bit more of that margin of time back, plus both spouses are back to working. They’re able to replace that car at age 38. There is a lot to look back on and go, “Man, it was just moving so fast in this period of time.” So as you can imagine, not only are all these life events taking place in the 30s, what’s happening in their financial life is also pretty hectic and pretty messy. You can see that in the early 30s, they still had to prioritize building back that emergency fund. Things like replacing an automobile and having a kid, they take resources away from you. But one of the things they recognized is, rather than making the easy decision, rather than making the comfortable decision, they follow the financial order of operations, meaning even though they had to cut back their savings rate, they still were making sure to get their employer matched. They were still getting that free money. And then when they bought the house and one of them decides to stay home, they had to back down their savings rate again. And you actually can see here, there was a point in Manny and Matty’s 30s where the only thing they were doing was getting the employer match. Yeah, all they were able to do was get the employer match because life got so messy. And there was really a couple-year period there where one spouse had to stay home, expenses were high, life was expensive. They were not at that 25% savings rate that we suggest. But they made sure that the bridge was a short one. They made sure that they put in the effort that as soon as the stay-at-home spouse went back to work, they immediately got right back on the savings train and got back to building for their financial future. I think it’s interesting right in the middle of the messy middle, we have them only saving 5% because that’s the way life is, you know? We’re not going to be perfect. No human out there is perfect. No journey is perfect. So it’s okay that you have these setbacks, as long as you constantly feel like there is that clock ticking in the background telling you, “Hey, get back on track.” And they did it. And you’re going to see a little bit later when we give you the results, they’re still on a path to success even with all the curveballs that life threw their way. And then you can see as the kids get a little bit older, and as the kids go off to school, and as the dual income working situation normalizes, and as some of the big expenses fall off as they get into the late 30s, they’re able to actually be saving. I mean, yeah, they’re still putting money in the emergency fund. They’re still trying to get from greater than three months to six months of living expenses. But they’re able to put money in the 401k. They’re doing the HSA. They’re doing the Roth IRA. And they’re even able to hit step seven. They’re even able to get into hyper accumulation saving in an after-tax brokerage account to prepare for the future. So this was a big decade. There were some big things that happened. There are some big takeaways. One, we’ve already mentioned, even though life got hard, and even though it would have been very easy for them to just shut down all savings altogether, they recognized that the financial order of operations exists for a reason. And step two, because free money is so valuable, so good, even when life got hard, they never walked away from the free money. They kept getting that employer match working for them, even when things were tight. And I think that it’s worth giving them a compliment is they made good conservative decisions on both the car purchases, with deferring when that was just not appropriate. They also, on the house purchase, they stayed within the 25% at the time. I know they quickly got a little underwater because of one deciding to have to stay home, but they stayed on that path. And then that’s the part, it’s okay if sometimes the best life choices don’t match up to the best financial choices. That’s the way life works sometimes. Part of the beauty in the journey is the journey itself. Like, it’s messy, it’s hard, it’s not easy. But there is sweetness all along the way. I got to believe that they were super excited. They started a family, they grew their family, they bought a house, they were able to establish roots. Yeah, those might have had some financial ramifications, but it’s part of the process. It’s part of their journey. But what they recognized was they were able to aggressively catch back up on investing as they moved forward. They didn’t rest and settle in the messiness. They powered through it, and they got back to savings so they could get back to building for a more beautiful tomorrow. And then if you look at the visual on this, this is what I think is interesting is that you say, “Look, they entered their 30s at step four because of the wedding, and then they ended the 30s at step eight.” Like, man, that sounds like a great, yeah, that was an easy journey. But if you actually look at the EKG, that’s what we call it in the content meeting, if you look at the EKG of their financial order of operations journey, this thing is up, it’s down, it’s up, it’s down, it’s up, it’s down. Now here’s the good news. Once you come out of the messy middle, if you’ve done it right, you’re going to be setting yourself up for that great big beautiful tomorrow. But it is going to be very hard in those middle 30 years. But when you make it through it, it can be sweet, and it can set you up for 40s and 50s.
