HELP! I’m Financially Responsible But It’s SO Boring

What Is the Mundane Middle? (0:00)

Brian: Boring! Let’s be honest: when you’re doing the right things with money, it doesn’t always feel exciting, especially in those latter steps of the FOO, which can take a while to get through. So what do you do when things start to feel slow and boring?

Bo: Brian, I am so excited because today we’re going to be talking to those of you in what we like to call the mundane middle. It’s the middle of your career. You’re saving regularly, likely around step six or seven of the FOO, and we’re going to give you some guidance for what you should do in that boring in-between, including some milestones you can aim for and even celebrate through the process.

Brian: I’m Brian, he’s Bo, and we’re financial advisers here to guide you through that mundane middle to get to your great big beautiful tomorrow. With that, let’s dive right in.

The Barbecue Analogy: Slow and Low (0:52)

Bo: So Brian, when we say the mundane middle, what we’re actually talking about is this part of financial wealth building that feels monotonous and slow. I’ve already said it’s around steps six and seven, and it just feels like you were go, go, go and now it seems like you’re just waiting.

Brian: In the early stages of the Financial Order of Operations, there’s a lot going on. You’re trying to get your emergency fund set up, trying to capture the free money from your employer, protecting yourself from paying 20-plus percent interest. So when you start getting to steps five, six, and seven, it is going to feel slow even if you’re doing the right thing. I’ve made this analogy before, but I think it’s worth bringing back because it’ll give you a visual that helps, even if it makes you a little hungry. When you smoke meat, especially if you’re from Texas or the South where we love our barbecue, you do it low and slow. A lot of barbecue comes from humble cuts of meat, just like a lot of millionaires come from humble beginnings. When you’re trying to get that rub to stick, you hold it on with yellow mustard. That’s the discipline of your financial life. The salt and pepper that gives it that delicious taste? That’s compounding interest. As you start cooking low and slow, just like you’re building wealth, it takes a while to get there. And you’re going to notice this weird thing that happens when you’re cooking meat, just like when you’re building success. When the temperature gets to around 160 degrees, it hits what’s called the stall. A lot of people will try to speed this up. They might even make mistakes like taking it out and microwaving it. No, that’s a complete disaster. You just have to be patient. Let the special stuff work that’s happening behind the scenes and don’t rush the process. It’s the exact same thing with wealth creation. It’s okay if it’s slow and low in developing. We’re going to help you through with some tips so you don’t try to microwave your wealth creation and make mistakes with crypto and other distractions. You’re going to focus on what matters and use these tips.

Tip 1: Look How Far You’ve Come (3:09)

Bo: So the question becomes, what can you do during the stall? What can you do during those times when it feels like you got a lot accomplished early on and you know where you’re going, but right now it is this mundane middle? We’re going to share four tips that we think will help. The first one might seem intuitive, but so many people forget to do it. We want you to right now look how far you’ve come in your journey. Because if you are in the mundane middle, it means you have already knocked out some pretty big planning areas of your financial life.

Brian: A lot of us come from humble beginnings. And when you go through periods like we just had with the inflation run-up in 2020 and beyond, you start saying, “Man, this thing is running away from me.” You can start feeling overwhelmed. Stop. It’s going to be okay. Remember, time is going to be your superpower because of compounding growth. Look back. Log into those retirement accounts. Think about just how magical it is. I even use this in Millionaire Mission when I try to show people how much of their account is actually growth versus their own contributions. For somebody who starts saving at age 20, 95% of their account value in retirement is going to be from growth. Even if you’re a typical American who starts saving and investing at age 30, it’s going to be 89% growth. That’s what is amazing about compounding interest. That’s why we can say things like for a 20-year-old, it’s $95 a month, and for a 30-year-old, it’s $270 a month. A little bit goes a long way. But you have to start the process and then always be buying.

Bo: Remember, there was a point in time where you first opened your Roth IRA and it had a zero balance, or when you first signed up for your 401(k) and there were zero dollars in there. If you have moved any length of time since then, you likely have some money in there. Take a moment to celebrate that. Log into the accounts, view them, see where you are. And then we want you to take it a step further. At least annually, you should be tracking your net worth. Not just logging into an account to see how many dollars you have in a single place, but thinking about your overall financial enterprise. List out everything you own, everything you owe money on, and what’s the difference between those two? When you take what you own and subtract what you owe, that gives you your net worth. That’s your current position. It shows you exactly where you are right now today. Right now, today, maybe you maxed out your Roth IRA and have $7,500 in there. This time last year you had zero. That is progress worth looking back on and worth celebrating.

Brian: I look at the net worth as your dashboard. You’re going to be the CEO of a multiple seven-figure enterprise, so you need to start acting accordingly. That’s why if you want to know the exact tool Bo and I use for our net worth, we have a great one. Go to learn.moneyguy.com for the actual net worth tracker and tool that we personally use. I like to see where the debt is, what’s been the change in the last year, how my emergency reserves are holding up compared to investment performance compared to what I’ve made through my labor. All of that is available as a dashboard view. And then think about step seven where we’re talking about the three-bucket strategy. Are you in after-tax assets? Tax-free? Tax-deferred? All of this is in your purview so you can be better with your money.

Bo: How on earth can you know if you are ahead of the curve, on the curve, or don’t even know where the curve is if you don’t know where you’re starting? If you haven’t started tracking your net worth, start right now today. And even if you say, “Guys, I just graduated, I have student loan debt, my net worth is negative, I’ll wait until I get positive.” Don’t do that. Because even if you’re going from really, really negative to slightly less negative, that is still an improvement. That is still worth tracking. That’s still worth notating. So tip number one, no matter where you are in your journey, notate how far you’ve come and the strides that you’ve made.

Tip 2: Calculate Where You’re Going (7:42)

Bo: And then we’re going to take you to tip number two. Now we want you to calculate. I know how far I’ve come. Now I want to think about where I’m going. What is that great big beautiful tomorrow that I’m actually working towards?

Brian: When we all feel overwhelmed, I’ve already told you to look backwards and see how far you’ve come. But now let’s look forward. Remember, you potentially are a billionaire of time. There’s a lot of potential for that component of time to really grow your assets. And don’t let it just be us telling you this from our lips to your ears. I want you to go to moneyguy.com/resources and look at our compound interest calculator. You can put in your specific numbers, see a visual, see it calculate, see what saving a little bit more is going to do for your future. Let’s actually visualize this and see what the results of your hard work are.

Bo: What I think is wild is if you remember back to math class or if you’ve ever plotted something out and looked at an exponential curve, it seems like it’s increasing slowly, slowly, slowly, and then all of a sudden it ramps up into a hockey stick. Oftentimes when you are in the mundane middle, you might be right there at that threshold. It’s felt slow slow slow. But you are at the point where if you can continue to give it time and continue to let your money work for you, the exponential growth increases and it gets really, really exciting. If you don’t believe us, let me walk you through a quick example. So, if you go to moneyguide.com/resource, minutes, we have this compound interest calculator that is incredible. Let’s say you’re starting with $10,000 and you’re saving $200 per month at an 8% rate of return. You’re 30 years old, you’re going to work for another 30 years, and you want to see what this money can turn into by the time you turn 60. Now you can see that exponential graph curve. Early on in your journey, years one through five, the majority of your account value is contributions. The first five years your contributions are $22,000 and the account is only worth $29,000. But as you move through time, the growth gets further and further away from your contributions. That is literally compound interest, the eighth wonder of the world, taking hold. For this person who started with $10,000 and is saving just $200 a month, in 30 years they will have over $400,000 saved. Pretty incredible.

Brian: Bo, I noticed there’s a blue line at year 15. What is that showing us?

Bo: This is the boiling point. This is where your account has now reached the point where it is actually growing even faster than you’re saving. The rate of return on the assets you’ve built up is now outpacing even your contributions. It’s an incredible milestone and it’s worth celebrating. If you play with the compound interest calculator, you can see exactly where your boiling point is.

So, by the way, if you want to see how comedic our content team is, too, they didn’t say bowling point. It actually has bowling in there where they’re taking advantage of my trouble to pronounce things so that you can be better with your money. And what I also love is it shows you if you can just do a little bit more, whether that’s $100 a month or $200 a month more. It even backs into the math if you say, “Hey, what if I want to be a millionaire? What if $400,000 isn’t enough?” There’s a lot of functionality here. Get out there today and go check out our compound interest calculator.

Bo: Or if you have a young person asking for advice, teens or children or friends who haven’t caught the personal finance bug, this is a great tool to share with them to show them just how powerful their dollars can be.

Tip 3: Celebrate the Many Milestones (12:10)

Bo: Tip number one was to celebrate how far you’ve come. Tip number two was to think about where you’re going and project moving forward. Tip number three, and this one might be the most valuable inside the mundane middle, is to celebrate the many milestones.

Brian: This could be its own show. In fact, it has been a show when we talk about these milestones, but we felt it was so powerful that we wanted to lean into this celebration.

Bo: You actually know what some of these stops of success are going to be in your journey. There are the big milestones, like financial independence and reaching the boiling point. But even inside that journey, there are little mini pieces that might not be huge, but they are certainly worth celebrating. So we want to walk you through a few that we think could be valuable. The first one, Brian, I still remember when this happened for me. I started contributing to a Roth IRA pretty early and I was doing $50 a month. But $50 a month was not getting me maxed out. I still remember the very first year, I think it was $4,500 or $5,000 a year, where I maxed out my Roth IRA and I was like, “Holy cow, that’s something to celebrate.” Fast forward to 2026, the max Roth IRA contribution is $7,500 a year if you’re under 50, which is $625 a month. If you can reach that, it is a time for celebration. And if you are married, you can also celebrate that point in time where you both max out your Roth IRAs. These are mini milestones to keep you motivated. Another milestone worth thinking through is when you hit that next tier of savings. Whatever tier you’re defining for yourself. Maybe it’s when you go from saving $100 a month to $500, or from $500 to $1,000. If you can celebrate when you’re making those changes, it’s going to give you the motivation to keep changing and keep improving moving forward.

Brian: I still remember when my wife and I crossed $1,000 a month in savings. It’s a big deal. We went out to our favorite restaurant to celebrate. Remember, these are milestones to celebrate, so actually go out there and do it when you cross into these points.

Bo: Another one we all remember: at any point in time when your portfolio adds a new digit. You save your first $10, then your first $100, then $1,000, then $10,000, then $100,000, then a million, then two million. Every one of those milestones, every one of those steps is worth celebrating.

Brian: That’s why I love it when people go in the Moneyverse and share when they’ve crossed into six figures or even seven figures. Definitely celebrate those moments because it is really powerful when you start seeing your army of dollars working just as hard as you do.

Bo: There’s a lot of people out there that say, “Yeah, big deal, you saved a million. A million dollars doesn’t matter anymore.” You know what’s true? You can’t get to $2 million unless you get to $1 million first. And you can’t get to $3 million unless you get to $2 million. So celebrating adding these digits and watching your portfolio value grow is moving you to the place that you want to be. And one of the ways you get to influence how quickly that happens is your savings rate.

Brian: Let’s look at what it takes to reach that first crucial million dollars. If you’re saving $1,000 a month, it’s going to take you a little over 25 years. But if you want to choose your own adventure and make it happen even faster, increase your monthly savings to $2,000 a month and you can get there in as little as 18 years. That shaves off about seven years just by increasing your contribution. This doesn’t have to happen all at once. I started with a few hundred bucks, then crossed into $1,000, then $2,000. If $3,000 a month, it’s under 15 years. If $4,000 a month, it’s a little over 12 years. You can speed this process up by controlling how much you contribute.

Bo: What’s wonderful is that oftentimes in our financial lives we end up stacking these. Maybe in your 30s you’re saving $1,000 a month. Then in your 40s, if you can increase your savings by another $2,000, maybe by maxing out your 401(k) and both Roth IRAs, all of a sudden you’re saving $3,000 a month. That is another million dollars you’re adding on top of the million you started building in your 30s. And so this stacks through time as you’re moving towards your financial independence number. It’s all about celebrating these small mini micro wins along the way.

Mini Milestone: The Crossover Point (17:44)

Brian: Another milestone worth celebrating is when your portfolio itself is able to grow by more than you’re saving. A lot of the earlier steps put more and more on you. Mini milestone number four is when your army of dollars actually starts doing more than you. This is when compounding interest really starts paying dividends. Instead of you working more with your brain, your back, your hands, your army of dollar bills actually starts producing more money than you save. We call this the crossover point.

Bo: Let me give you an example of how to calculate where the crossover point exists for you. Let’s look at our favorite financial mutant, Manny. Let’s assume Manny makes $50,000 a year with no raises. He’s a true mutant, saving 25% of his gross income, which is $12,500 per year, potentially including the employer match. So the question we’re trying to answer is: at what portfolio value does the portfolio add more to itself than Manny does? In this case, it’s $156,250. If you think about saving $12,500 per year at a reasonable long-term rate of return of around 8%, it would have taken Manny about nine years to reach the crossover point. And that’s okay. Remember, it’s supposed to be slow, slow, slow, and then it gets really fast. After almost a decade of savings, Manny’s portfolio can now save even harder than he can.

Brian: If you’re a visual learner and you want to see what this crossover point calculation looks like in real time, it’s pretty easy to figure out.

Bo: Take your annual savings, let’s say $20,000 per year, and divide that by your estimated rate of return. If you assume 8%, that’s $20,000 divided by 0.08, which equals your crossover point. So if you’re saving $20,000 a year and you believe you can earn 8% per year, your crossover point, the point at which your portfolio will save even more than you do, is at $250,000.

Brian: When you do this for yourself, because I know this is going to generate a lot of curiosity, I’d invite you to go to the Moneyiverse and celebrate with us. We created a screenshot with some of the key people who have been talking to us and sharing their success points.

Bo: Petro Hippie said, “Paid off my husband’s parent loan of $163,000 by age 30. Still working the personal loan, but it’s $20K at a max 4.5%. Mainly cruising.” And Sam said, “I just hit step eight for the first time with our raise this year and we are so excited that we are finally able to start saving in a 529 for our baby boy.” A lot of times in our lives, money is a taboo subject. That is not the case inside the Moneyiverse. If you want to connect with other like-minded financial mutants to answer your questions, celebrate your wins, or just have a conversation around money, go to moneyguy.com/moneyiverse.

Tip 4: Find Your Why (22:01)

Brian: While you’re in the stall and your money is starting to work behind the scenes and things feel somewhat boring, it’s also a time to ask yourself, “What is the whole purpose of this money?” Because money is only a tool. This is a great time to hit the pause button while your money is growing in the background and assess what your why is and what brings you happiness. Let’s go through an exercise to help you fine-tune this.

Bo: Brian, you’re good at a lot of things, but this is one where you have a special skill set. We tell people all the time to figure out their why, and people say, “Well, I don’t know how. What steps do I take?” I’ve heard you say this over and over again. There are techniques you can employ to discover your why. One of those, and you say this all the time, is to do a memories audit. What does that mean?

Brian: When you think about a memories audit, I want you to really reflect. It can be on the last year, the last five years, or the last decade. What are things when you look back that just hit you? They’re the blossoming memories you see us talk about on shows and that I’ve written about in the book. These are the things that are the fuel for life. And it doesn’t have to be a big thing. Of course the big things like travel and making memories with the family are going to hit a lot of people. But for some people it can be smaller things, like a great cup of coffee. You can get into the minutia of your day-to-day interactions and ask what things make you excited when you wake up in the morning. That is part of your why. We want to make sure from a financial standpoint we’re putting enough reflection on what gives you happiness so you can do more of it and enjoy this one life you have.

Bo: This is a silly example, but my wife and I right now have three young kids. We are indeed inside the messy middle. And Brian mentioned I love a really good cup of coffee. Well, coffee is not my why, but one of my whys is getting to spend meaningful, connected time with my wife. And one of the ways we love to do that is escaping for a cup of coffee, just the two of us. That’s why I love the coffee. If you can do that memory audit, you can figure out what are those moments, what are those things, where are those times? It’s going to allow you to reassess. I’m not just living for my future why. I can actually live and enjoy today in my present why. And another thing you can do to really hone in on this is to begin setting some non-financial goals. Remember, money is not a goal in and of itself. It’s simply a tool that allows us to achieve our goals. Maybe your goals are things like running a 5K, running a marathon, starting to exercise, starting a family, or reconnecting with family. If you can begin to define and set some of those non-financial goals that don’t necessarily have a price tag, it will also begin to lift up and amplify what your why is.

Brian: And and probably I just got ahead of myself, Bo, because I definitely when when I mentioned the coffee, maybe that’s not your why, but it’s definitely what I consider a happiness maximiz. And you just hit it, you know, because you spend time with your your wife drinking coffee, it’s makes feel good moments. So, it probably makes sense that this is why coffee is a maximizer for you. But for a lot of other people, it’s going to be maybe for me, I’d mentioned low and slow. I used to love smoking meat and doing other things with I think it’s because it created so much happiness with my friends and my neighbors. Figure out what creates happiness and let’s do more of that and more often as well.

Bo: And what I think is great is the more of these you can uncover and the more you peel back the layers around the things that genuinely bring you fulfillment, the more you might recognize that you might be able to do those things right now and not have to wait for the future. These are things that can happen in the mundane middle. Brian, you’ve told me one of your favorite things in the world is going on walks. You do it here, you do it when you travel. You’ve now started doing these “tangent times.” You don’t have to wait for retirement to go on walks. You get to do it by yourself or with your spouse. I would consider that a happiness maximizer for you. It’s something you’ve uncovered in the past couple of years and I’d argue it’s probably something that’ll be with you for the rest of your life.

Brian: It helps you physically, it helps your mental health, it helps with your sleep. We live in a beautiful world and just getting out there and being around people is wonderful. We have a park so close to the office. It’s fun being not only in nature but also around others and enjoying the moment. Sometimes as a financial mutant, we get so busy focusing on what we’re building toward. If you can take a moment to be more present in your life and understand what is beautiful around you right now, you’ll understand this happiness maximizer exercise a lot better.

Bo: And remember, one of the things about the mundane middle is you don’t recognize what’s happening while it’s happening, but you notice it after the fact. That’s one of the reasons why if you go to moneyguy.com/resources and play with our compound interest calculator, one of the things we highlight is the boiling point. It’s this inflection point on the exponential graph where instead of moving slow and somewhat linear, you now move exponentially. Your assets literally start working harder than you do because of time and compound growth. What you’re trying to do in the mundane middle is work towards that boiling point. Because once you hit that, you’re off to the races. You start doing your annual net worth statements and you’re like, “Holy cow, how did my net worth go up that much over the past year? When did I get to this level of financial success?” It happens slow, slow, slow, and then before you know it, you wake up and say, “Holy cow, how did I get here?”

Brian: It’s such a beautiful thing how it all integrates. There’s the famous adage that a watched pot never boils. Wealth creation can feel mundane and boring, but it’s not like nothing is going on during those years while it’s building in the background. It’s building up the energy under the surface, exactly what we’re talking about with the exponential growth. If you can just stay the course, always be buying, and be consistent with your discipline and your behaviors, you will be rewarded. True wealth building is slow and steady work. If you do this right, you’ll hit the boiling point and you’ll be eating brisket and lobster. Don’t get distracted in this fast-paced consumption society we live in. Understand who you are and what the true journey to wealth building is so you can do it with that much more purpose and not get distracted.

When Complexity Arrives: Taking the Relationship to the Next Level (29:25)

Bo: There likely will come a point where you say, “Holy cow, how did I get here? I remember where I started and I don’t remember things moving quickly. But I woke up one day and the numbers have gotten really big. The complexity showed up even though I wasn’t looking for it. And I don’t have the same time I used to have. I’m worried things are falling through the cracks.” If you begin to find yourself in that place, that might be an indication that you’ve reached the boiling point. And it might even be a time when you want to consider taking the relationship to the next level. Not trying to navigate your financial life alone, but rather having a partner come alongside you to make sure that you’re doing money better.

Brian: Even if your goal is to keep things as simple as possible, success is going to create complexity. And a lot of you quickly realize, “Oh my gosh, this is the first time I’ve ever done this. I’m worried. I don’t know what I don’t know, and I’m going to screw this thing up.” Don’t worry. Don’t panic. This is why we’ll leave the porch light on for you. We’ve done this for thousands of you so that you can live your best life. Let your army of dollars do all the heavy lifting for you. Let yourself enjoy the dividend of all your previous hard work. That’s what we do for our clients: we build that peace of mind. I’m Brian. This is Bo. Go out to moneyguy.com, download our resources, find out what it’s like to become a client. We’re going to keep creating this content. Money Guy, out.