I’m Investing 25%, But I’m Still Not Maxing Out My Investments!

Ready for Brandon's question. He asks if I am able to reach 25% retirement before fully completing step six of the Foo. What are the guidelines for step 7 to complete the three-bucket strategy? So, I think we get this a lot, like what if you're saving 25% but it's not actually maxing out the retirement accounts? On the financial order of operations, what do you do then? Yeah, so here's a really easy solution, Brandon. What you need to do is you need to move from the Foo to the Foo for you. You need to move to the one that is customized for you because why does step seven matter? Well, it depends on what you are trying to do with your dollars. Do you know what you're ultimately saving for? If you're trying to save, for example, for early retirement, maybe you remember the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) group, or maybe you just want to check out earlier. You might not be able to get to those 401(k) assets before age 55 or 59 and a half if you change jobs. You can't get to those IRA assets. So you might need to begin building assets that you can access before that time. Now, if you're someone who says, "Hey, I'm going to retire at 65, and I'm going to start drawing Social Security at full retirement age," well then maybe you just continue on the standard Foo. But what you have to figure out is, what is my specific plan, and what steps do I need to put into place to move towards the plan that makes the most sense for my situation? Yeah, I think you said it best, Bo, in the fact that this is the way this plays out. By the way, we had an engineer at one of our presentations. She raised her hand and she goes, "Hey, you know, how does this all work? How do I get to step seven if I can do 25%, but I don't hit the, you know, it was less at the time, but now it's twenty-two thousand five hundred dollars." And that happens all the time. If you're somebody who makes, like, seventy, eighty thousand dollars a year, I could completely see how you get to 25% savings rate and you're still not maxing out things. You'll go to seven so you can understand the "why" because you do need to kind of; that's why you can graduate once you get to 25%, even if it's not maxing out fully, because we've got to start thinking about what you're going to look like when you land the airplane. And that's what I loved about the Foo for You, is because that is the three-bucket strategy because you might have to structure things where you're just not going to get into your 50s and only have retirement assets and have no bridge account that can get you to the key dates in your journey to gaining access to some of those other retirement accounts. You've got to do the work, and that's why I love that we have tried to, and this is where products like this come up when we're looking at our listeners and our viewers, and we're trying to figure out how do we accelerate your path? The part of the Foo for You is so you can figure out where am I? Am I ahead of the curve? Behind the curve? It's to kind of know your number, what are you actually saving for? If you go to learn.moneyguy.com, we do have a "Know Your Number" course so you can actually figure out where the heck am I in this process. We did this not just to create a product because we're money-hungry or something like that. We're just trying to figure out because, realize, the biggest thing we want from you is for you to reach the abundance cycle, meaning you go all the way to the tippity-top where you've reached getting, you know, six hundred, seven hundred thousand, and you need a co-pilot because your life has gotten complicated through success. That's where I want you to really come to us. But if I can accelerate that by creating the financial order of operations course, then the "Know Your Number" course, that's why you start to see it's not this master plan to try to accelerate your success. We're investing in you by creating things that will make that happen. I encourage you to go check it out, learn.moneyguy.com. How can we get you there quicker so that you can get to abundance and consider hiring us? Kudos to you, by the way, saving 25%. And the fact that you're asking this question, Brandon, goes ahead and lets us know you are a financial mutant. You're doing the things that you're supposed to be doing. Now it's just a matter of figuring out how do I continue this path and how do I optimize for the great big beautiful tomorrow that I'm trying to live.