The Truth About $250,000 Saved by 42

Introduction: 20 Years of Marriage and Building Wealth (0:00)

Dan: Sorcha’s father had an accounting guy and he goes, “How do you guys afford anything?”

Bo: This period from 2017 to 2020, you’re like 34 to 37 years old. What you’re not saying is, “Hey, we had it all figured out in our 20s.”

Dan: When COVID hit, 70% of the staff was laid off. It was suddenly we were going backwards again.

Bo: We live in this imaginary world. We think everyone who is 26 years old and they got a couple hundred grand saved up. But when you started figuring it out because you had those behaviors in place, you began to really start making some changes and making some improvements. And as we sit here today, you guys were great. You shared with us your savings, like what you guys are actually doing now that you have some margin. And it’s wild.

Bo: 20 years. Congratulations. That’s awesome, right? Like what’s the secret? How’d you do it?

Sorcha: Just go to bed mad and wake up happy. I don’t know.

Brian: That is the opposite of what I think—that’s the way you’re supposed to do it. Don’t try to solve your problems when you’re tired. It’s not going to go well for you.

Dan: My favorite thing Sorcha has ever said is it’s not “the more you give, the more you get.” It’s “the more you give, the more there is.”

Sorcha: Yeah. You just got to put it into the bucket. You’re not waiting for somebody else to give it to you.

Bo: I love it. Just keep adding to the pot.

Sorcha: Complete management myself and I—

Dan: Yeah. I’m a distribution manager for fitness equipment.

Bo: Fitness equipment. We’ll talk afterwards. Let’s finish.

Brian: Just so you know, they said, “Hey, one of you guys is going to be very excited about what one of them does for a living.” And I immediately thought I’m the quirky one that has all the Disney hobbies and all the travel hobbies. Little did I know it was going to be some meathead thing for Bo.

Dan: I have a degree in history and English, right? And I ended up in fitness school.

Sorcha: I’m a fleet manager and I have an opera performance degree. Don’t ask me to sing.

Bo: How you know exactly where I was going with that. And we’re done. That’s awesome.

The Early Years: Getting Started (1:52)

Bo: Got married, started pursuing the careers. Then what?

Sorcha: We had our first daughter 2 and a half years after marriage. He got a promotion when she was about 9 or 10 months old, but it required us to move out of state. We kind of made the decision that he’s going to make up for my lost income. We’re not going to be able to afford child care. We would have no extra car. Like everything was going to kind of even out, but we were going to do it for his job title, you know, for the career growth. So we moved for that for about a year. Then we moved back to New York because I was pregnant.

Bo: So y’all were in New York and y’all moved to Columbus. Got it.

Sorcha: We decided that Ohio was not necessarily the good long-term plan. The support system wasn’t in place. And then I worked again after he was born for a little bit, like some part-time stuff. And then we joined a first-time home buyers club, which was a big thing.

Bo: What’s the first time home buyers club?

Sorcha: It’s like you had to take mortgage classes and you get a little bit more education on what you’re getting into.

Bo: I love that.

Sorcha: And they—you have to sign up for a savings plan. You have to put in an exact amount every month for—was it 10 months? And then they’ll cover the difference of that for your closing cost.

Brian: That’s a New York State program.

Dan: It’s a New York State program through like Catholic Charities or something. But there was a requirement of PMI on a time period as opposed to a percentage of equity you got. So it was minimum of 5-year PMI.

Dan: So we kind of got a little bit tight on that. But it’s to help people who were in our situation—didn’t have a lot of money. And that helped us get our first house for sure. And that was a big step. It was huge.

Bo: So this is after second kid back to New York.

Sorcha: It’s actually after third kid.

Brian: What’s the age distance? What’s the spread?

Dan: 2-2-2.

Sorcha: Amelia will be 17 in a few weeks. Calder’s 14 and Louis is 13.

Current Financial Situation (3:32)

Bo: I want to hear more about the messy middle you’ve made it through. But you said, “Hey, I feel like we’re going into the messiest part—the expensive part of the messy middle.” I think because where you guys sit right now, you were kind enough to share a net worth statement with us. As you’re sitting here right now, total net worth of about $537,000 and right now total household income, you know, it’s variable based on your pay, but somewhere between $250,000-$280,000 a year. But if I’m hearing you right, you haven’t always earned that sort of income. This is sort of a relatively new thing. So, have you guys always been steady and consistent savers or is this a new thing that’s been able to happen?

The Wake-Up Call (4:08)

Dan: Sorcha’s father had an accounting guy, right? And in our first apartment when we were first getting our first kid and we’re like, “Man, we just feel like we can’t afford anything.” And he said, “I’ll look at your books, you know, pro bono. We’ll take a look at your books.” And he goes, “How do you guys afford anything?” And we just kind of—I don’t know. We’re just paying our bills first. I don’t know. We’re not doing anything. Stingy. Yeah, frugal is the word, right? Like frugal, not stingy.

Sorcha: We were trying to be.

Brian: As a negative. Frugal sounds like you’re just masters of or you know, field generals of your army of dollars.

Sorcha: Interesting points came out of it. One, we grew a lot of our own food when we had our house. A lot of vegetables once we had a yard, we were all in on it. And then we cook a lot. And I think that was a big thing. A lot of our peers don’t seem to cook a lot. We cook a lot. And that keeps our grocery budget really predictable. Comparatively, as much as we’re into things like—oh I, you know, Dan likes some watches or I like gardening or we have nice cars but they’re not like sports cars, they’re not—we try to be sensible about all the stuff. We try to always have the long view. So I think that’s been informed by our past a little bit, you know, our goals for the future about the kids’ stability and our stability.

Brian: Y’all done everything kind of in tandem and the fact that I see Dan’s 401(k), I see your 401(k). I see the Roth IRAs. Y’all kind of equally yoked on those—have started being funded at the same time. You’re in your 40s, but you didn’t start saving and investing in your 20s. I don’t get the feeling because it sounds like there was too much life going on. So, when did you catch that? “Hey, we ought to start turning some of these lifestyle choices into money that shows up on the net worth?”

The Turning Point: 2017 (5:50)

Dan: So 2017 was when we first had the income to do it because I had my first sort of manufacturer job where I was out in the field being a rep and covering a pretty big territory which gave us a little bit of a bigger shovel than we had. And at the time we still had student loan debt, we had credit cards, we had everything that everybody has, right? And we had three kids. Almost simultaneously, Sorcha got an actual career job working at a place called BOCES, which is a Board of Cooperative Education in New York. We didn’t really know what to do. My mom was a banker, but you know, she kind of fell into that. She sort of pushed us though. She’s like, “You really need to be saving.” But information without context didn’t really hit us in the way that it needed to, right? And so paying off the credit cards first and then going after the student loans. And then eventually we had a surplus and we said, “Oh, well, it would be great to have new windows, wouldn’t it?”

Sorcha: Oh my gosh, our house needed work. It was built in 1951. It had no updates. So, we had the wood, glass, aluminum, stone basement leeching, you know, like— It wasn’t bad. It had good bones and it just needed to be brought back up.

Dan: But so 2017 to 2020 to answer your direct question—that’s when, that’s the first time we sort of had enough income and we had the habits of being so frugal with no income before that we were able to really dig out very, very quickly in that three-year period.

Brian: It wasn’t like y’all changed who you were. Meaning that you had a period of waste and then all of a sudden you caught on, “hey, I need to be better” and you started saving and investing. Y’all’s lifestyle was just so expensive—life was taking all of your income. Y’all were already naturally being super disciplined because we had to be. But then there was a moment where you started catching some traction with your career that all that discipline—yes it wasn’t yielding money that was margin that was turning up on the net worth statement—as soon as you caught traction with your job it was like windfalls started coming in because you had the behaviors already established.

Dan: In that three-year period we paid off the student loans, we paid off the credit cards and we paid off our cars. So we were left with just the mortgage and you know, the mortgage was reasonable. Yeah. $750 a month and you go, “Oh well, I’m in no rush.” And I think the rate to stay at that house—we bought it in 2012 so I think the interest rates were really low then too. So there was no rush to pay that off and so we only owed like $70-something on the house when we left.

The Gold Experiment (8:15)

Dan: The problem I had—but Sorcha wasn’t part of really this—is “hey we want to start saving some money” and you know you go on the internet, you go “how do you save money?” and then you know there’s Mr. Ramsey and there’s a this and there’s a that and you go, “Oh, gold, huh? Oh, gold.” So, I was buying gold. I was buying gold. I mean, that was—

Sorcha: Well, it was like a hobby, too. So, it kind of kept us into a different mindset.

Dan: Yeah. And looking back, that really helped us with is that it did create a couple steps in between. We’re setting this money aside and if we were to sell it, there’s an actual couple physical steps we have to take.

Sorcha: It’s hard to go take the bullion to go—

Dan: So a little bit of extra friction there to just not spend it.

COVID Setback (8:55)

Dan: When COVID hit and you know the company I was working for, 70% of the staff was laid off because I was distributing to commercial gyms right and so they were all closed in the northeast. And then we had to move to Texas for work and it was suddenly we were going backwards again.

Sorcha: Then we moved into a house that was probably—I mean it went from the house we owed $70-something on to a house where we paid $340,000. So, it was a huge change. So, we’re like, “Wow, we’re starting over. Cool. Here we go again.”

Dan: The bullion didn’t help with that, right? I mean, it did because you could liquidate it and then, you know, it would help pay for some stuff.

Brian: There’s no income coming off—

Dan: Yeah, exactly. Just sitting there holding, but I do love that it instilled discipline in saving, spending time thinking about finances in a different way and us talking about it, right? That also added to it—something we hadn’t done previously.

The Reality of Starting Late (9:46)

Bo: This period from 2017 to 2020, you’re like 34 to 37 years old. What you’re not saying is, “hey, we had it all figured out in our 20s.” We live in this imaginary world. We think everyone who is 26 years old and they got a couple hundred grand saved up and they’re saving. That was not the reality for you guys. You guys got married and had kids and got into the messy middle and life was tight. And I think a lot of people will resonate with that. And it wasn’t until your late 30s you started figuring this stuff out. But when you started figuring it out, because you had those behaviors in place, you began to really start making some changes and making some improvements. And as we sit here today, you guys were great. You shared with us your savings, like what you guys are actually doing now that you have some margin. And it’s wild, right? Like when you look at this, you guys are both maxing out 401(k)s—$23,500, $23,500. You guys are both maxing out IRAs—$7,000, $7,000—and you have another $18,000 a year going into your brokerage account. So you guys are saving like 30%—almost $80,000 a year.

Dan: Well, there’s a lot to make up for, you know. I mean, there’s a lot of time to compound.

Bo: Sure. Well, tell me this. Is it going to—is this strategy going to work? Is it going to play out?

Dan: According to your lovely tools, yes.

The Parent Perspective (11:00)

Brian: Before we start giving you answers on that, I do want to ask you because y’all are unique perspective because you’re already naturally disciplined so you’re doing a lot of the right things in life. I’d love to know as two parents sitting here, two people who’ve been married for 20 years, because I’m so worried about my financial mutants is that they don’t do life sometimes because they’re just worried “we have to do this now or we’ll miss out.” What are y’all’s thoughts? Are you glad you did life?

Sorcha: We’ve both had different moments where we have felt pressure that “oh, we want to do more with the kids” and we wanted to spend more money to put them in a sport or to go on a family vacation or summer trip or whatever it was. But we don’t feel guilty. We don’t feel bad about anything that we’ve done. Not just because of the future or whatever they might need our stability for or whatever that we’re setting them up for, but because I don’t really think we could have. I don’t, you know, we look back and you’re like, there just wasn’t anything. There wasn’t—we went to the park all the time. The kids were outside. They were covered in paint as much as any other child and baked with us in the kitchen. And we read 50 million books a day. And like we’re very close family. So, I’m not really concerned that they weren’t raised the way I wanted to raise them. And none of that stuff cost a lot of money, but I bet it created amazing memories.

Dan: Kids don’t know they’re poor. Unless they have a comparative thing.

Brian: I want that t-shirt because that was literally what I grew up with. Happiest times of my childhood is when my dad was laid off because he was around all the time. And that’s you saying it at the parks. And I think sometimes us, especially if you’re a financially minded person, you feel like I don’t need to do this until I can afford everything. When truthfully it’s exactly what we just said. Kids don’t know they’re poor as long as you’re giving them the love and all the other things.

Sorcha: I think there was some moments where some of the charm wasn’t there. Like our kids are smart. So our son especially is like “well can we afford that?” I’m like “okay yes we can. We’re choosing not to buy it.” We’re not close to the curb because he would get nervous sometimes and we had to kind of redirect that.

Dan: The other part of that too though is that you know if you’re being intentional with your behavior and what you’re doing, is there time for guilt? I mean it just doesn’t exist. You know we did what we could at the time with what we had.

Retirement Projections (13:10)

Bo: If we just think about where you’re at now with your investment portfolio, $250,000 at the age of 42, and if we can continue saving, you know, $79,000-$80,000, a 30% savings rate moving forward, and we just assume based on your wealth multiplier, 7.8% rate of return for you guys. By the time you get to 50, 49, you’ve got like a $1.2 million portfolio. By 55, it’s $2.5 million. By 60, $4.1 million. By full retirement age, age 65, it’s like a $6.5 million portfolio.

Dan: I think I was using the tool wrong because that’s a much bigger number than I was looking at.

Brian: Purchasing power is not going to be—when that’s $6.5 million, it’s not the same as what—when we bring it back. So that’s why we put the box on the right with the cash flow because that does bring it back to present value from a cash flow perspective. So you can actually see what retirement would look like. It’s still pretty impressive though. So the question we would ask is, okay, if you had a portfolio, assuming a 4% withdrawal rate that could generate for you about $130,000 in today’s dollars, could you guys live off that? Could you guys live off of $10,000-$11,000 a month?

Bo: You’re like, where would we—what would we do with all that money?

Dan: Come look at our pantry. It’s all beans and rice and, you know, canned tomatoes and stuff.

Bo: But those are easy things to cook. You said you cook all the time. It’s just beans and rice. That stuff’s easy. I guess we can just fold up now in the episode and say this is it, right? We did it.

College Planning for Three Kids (14:30)

Bo: But we want to show you, okay, based on the behavior that you have in place, this is the trajectory you’re on, but you guys have some other stuff going on, right? A lot of life ahead of you. There’s some life that’s about to start happening. Why don’t you walk us through some of this life?

Sorcha: Amelia, the oldest, is in her senior year of high school. And it is a special high school. It’s a special high school. She’s earning her associate’s degree at the same time for free.

Bo: It’s like a dual enrollment type—

Dan: So, it’s part of the district. We’re in a pretty big district. There’s four high schools, like 30,000 kids. And she’s in a high school that is very—I think it’s an open lottery but it’s a very specific smaller school because of this difficulty essentially, right? So they work in tandem with TCC which is Tarrant County Community College and through the high school they can take concurrent associate degree classes which will then also count towards their high school diploma, right? So some of the kids will get through and they will get maybe most of it but they’ll still have the ability to get credits—lots of credits. And then if you’re really knuckled down, you can get the whole degree and actually graduate high school with—you graduate like a week before you get your high school graduation.

Brian: Awesome.

Sorcha: And our son just got in. It’s his freshman year. So, we’re pretty excited.

Bo: Does he seem like he’ll have a different take on how to handle—boys, too? I mean, so he’s a little—

Sorcha: He’s not as organized, but he’s a really smart kid. So, he’s incredibly smart and he’ll do fantastically. And for him specifically, the smaller class size is going to be a real boon for him, I think. So, yeah, they’ve got other cool opportunities there. They do Microsoft suite certifications, OSHA certification. There’s a lot of cool stuff—set you up for your skill set.

Dan: It’s also set you up for your four-year degree because there’s feeder programs. Sorcha’s already gotten into and accepted into Oklahoma and that’s where we’re looking to send. But they also have a program with Texas A&M and Texas University etc. etc.

The College Funding Strategy (16:18)

Bo: I’m thinking through the financial impact here. Associate’s degree first two years are covered. So $30,000 maybe in terms of the net—cut out half of college.

Dan: Half of college. You know we were so crushed by our student debt that we’re committed—

Sorcha: I like to say “we” but I consolidated.

Dan: Well she had a 1% interest rate. I had a 5% interest rate. So we know what it’s like to get out of college and have that hanging over you. Something we don’t want for our kids. And so our trade-off here is that if you buckle down and you do this associate’s and you get it, then we will cover the next two years of tuition for you to get your four-year degree.

Sorcha: If they go to the local school because you can live at home.

Dan: I mean, we’re not—there’s boundaries put on this as well. If Cornell calls, I’m not sure we’re going back to New York for that.

Brian: What else do you have going on in life?

Sorcha: We think there might be a car in the future.

Bo: Okay.

Sorcha: Car’s getting to the college. You need a car if especially if you’re going to live at home.

Dan: There’s no bus from where we are, at least. Certainly, there’s a real need for convenience because just especially with her and she’s now taking responsibility for driving to school and stuff. It will become a lot easier if we have that third car, right? But also I think what you’re getting at is that yeah, we are looking to move out of Texas again. You know, work is what brought us there. Texas has been very good to us, but we were commenting earlier to each other walking around, what is it about it that’s really—there’s push and pull to everything. And you know, it’s just the weather. You know, we grew up in the snowiest part of the country and it’s not that snowy down in Texas.

Sorcha: They get like two or three inches a year.

Dan: No, they get ice and I do like the way that Texas deals with it, which is we’re just going to shut everything down and wait for it to melt, right? I mean, I can certainly appreciate that.

The Move to Pacific Northwest (17:55)

Bo: So, okay, so you’re going to leave Texas. Where are you going to go?

Dan: We have a target list. It’s not locked in because we want to get all our kids through high school first and so we still have four or five years before that’s done. We’re looking at the Pacific Northwest right now just from a weather standpoint and from a lifestyle standpoint that suits us best because we can get the cooler temperatures, but we don’t get the snow.

Bo: So, okay. So, we’ve got some big plans, right? We got our kids who we want to be able to—they’re still got to pay for college and then we want to think about this big move. What’s been your strategy to think about how you’re going to pay for three different half college costs?

Sorcha: Well, that was where some of my questions lie because I was like, “well, we have the cash technically to get Amelia through. Will we have the cash again two and a half years later when Calder goes in and then only a year after that for Louis?” because they’re closer together.

The Sinking Fund Strategy (18:46)

Dan: So, we have an active strategy we’re doing, right? Which is that we have a sinking fund on top of our six-month emergency fund.

Brian: So if we looked at the net worth statement, which—because I noticed y’all’s cash was a little thick because you have the emergency fund. And so then that high yield savings account—is that what when you say sinking fund is that what you’re talking about?

Dan: So technically the emergency fund is that high yield with Amex and then we have a cash plus with Vanguard because that’s where all of our individual investments are and that pays just as much if not a little bit more than a high yield right now. And that is the sinking fund. So that bigger number is the sinking fund. We’re a little bit high on a six-month because it’s $4,345 a month.

Brian: So, give us the strategy. I mean, what is—what’s going in because obviously you have—y’all built this thing up to almost $50,000. You said we’re aggressively putting—

Dan: Well, we live frugally as we’ve established and we try to put $2,500 in every month. Awesome. Extrapolate that out over however many years. That hopefully should give us not just enough for our two years’ expansion of college for our kids, but then also enough for an extra down payment once we sell our house and move up because the Pacific Northwest is a lot more expensive.

Modeling the Sinking Fund (19:57)

Bo: I love as you’re thinking about the sinking fund, you recognize that these are near-term goals. They’re less than, you know, five years out. And so, one of the things we want to do is if something’s less than 5 years out, we really like liquid cash. We don’t want to put that money at risk because we know we’re going to need it. And so thinking through the timeline for the kids, we thought, “hey, let’s model out what this sinking fund looks like practically.” And you can see that right now today, we have about $48,000 in there. And if you’re able to save that $2,500 a month, and we just assumed that you were going to earn about 3% in—High yields a little bit higher than that, but—

Dan: Average that. It’s probably coming down. Oh, I get those emails from Amex every—

Bo: They’re letting you know. And so we kind of have okay—child 1 year 1 is going to happen next year and then child 1 year 2 will happen the following. Then we have a little bit of reprieve until we have child 2 year 1 and then child 2 year 2 plus child 3 year 1 and then we have child 3 year 2 and then by the time we get to about May of 2032 we’re out. We’ve done it. The kids have made it through. Right. And even with funding all the college, if you can stick to that $2,500 a month, and by the way, we assume that the cost of college is gonna be about $13,000. We inflated that 3% every year going forward. We’re estimating that your sinking fund—now, this doesn’t factor in car and the garden and that kind of stuff—but if you were to continue on that trajectory, about $187,000 even left over in the sinking fund to help potentially with this move. The strategy you have in place based on our analysis would suggest will work to get all three of the kids through school.

Dan: Yeah, thank God.

Sorcha: Yeah, that’s great.

Housing Cost Analysis (21:38)

Dan: Well, and we hope to depreciate our current mortgage enough that it would continue to offset moving. We’re not paying extra. It’s just, you know, knocking down—

Sorcha: Yeah, because that interest rate’s okay.

Bo: How’s the cost of housing in the area in Texas that you live and the cost in the areas in the Pacific Northwest?

Sorcha: A little more.I think in Pacific.

Dan: Where we live it jumped incredibly when we moved in in 2020. I think it did that for everyone. It did. But it—right. So it stabilized about—you know on our net worth statement that we do for ourselves, I put per your advice what we cost plus improvements and garden improvements. But you know what are all the houses around us selling for? It’s about $100,000 more than we paid. So when we look up in the Pacific Northwest where we want to be, it’s probably a hundred to $150,000 more currently than—

Bo: We did some assumptions. And so we know that you’re not moving right now. So you’re going to have two things that are kind of going to happen. The home you live in right now will likely appreciate, but so too will the house you’ll be buying somewhere else. So we wanted to kind of think through what that looks like. So if we think about your current house, we know that right now it’s worth about $450,000. And again, there are so many variables. We know there’s a ton of things that can change. We just want to kind of give you an idea of directionally where you guys are headed. And if the goal was to do this move once the third child finishes school, so that way you’re able to make it through the local school. 2032 is kind of what we’re targeting. Okay. Your current home is worth $450,000 now. It’ll be worth about $550,000. You know, if we just assume very modest 3% growth rate over the next couple years—but basically inflation. So too will the house in the Pacific Northwest. And we know that right now equivalent houses based on where we targeted for you guys to look are about $650,000. So if again if that grows at the rate of inflation, the house that you’re going to have to buy there is going to be a little under $800,000 in 2032. Thoughts?

Sorcha: That’s part of why we’re thinking of downsizing a little, honestly.

Brian: Does that freak you out to see those numbers?

Sorcha: Yeah, a little bit.

Dan: It does not freak me out at all.

Brian: I know we have different comfort levels. Why does it freak you out?

Sorcha’s Money Anxiety (23:43)

Sorcha: Oh, I’m just—Dan’s teased me about it before. I have emotional problems with money. Very uncomfortable with debt. Very uncomfortable with it. And I don’t think that’s necessarily bad, but where it gets bad is when I’m like, “should I buy that piece of cake? Can I?” You know, like it’s small stuff.

Dan: Like I just feel that she needs to buy school supplies. And I’m like, “baby, just buy school supplies.” I have a lot of hang ups.

Sorcha: It doesn’t bother me if I know—if we spend the time and say, “Oh, okay. This works out in our actual budget in real time.” But projecting out, I go, “I bet I can beat that.”

Bo: Are you concerned at all that the—I don’t want to use the term baggage that’s probably too aggressive, but the anxiety that you bought into that—are you worried about with the next move as you’re moving to a new—

Sorcha: Seeing it a little better this time. And plus, I want to go.

Dan: And there’s so much stuff that could change in five, six years. I mean, you know that we’re doing what we can now to get us there and the numbers thankfully reinforce that. Who knows what happens in the next 5 years. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff that could happen between then and now. And just worrying—for me worrying about that is not in my nature.

Monthly Mortgage Projections (24:51)

Bo: What’s your current mortgage? How much do you pay a month on your current mortgage?

Dan: Just under $2,000.

Bo: Just under $2,000. Because one of the things we said is, okay, obviously extrapolating home prices is one thing, but what really matters is the monthly carry for you guys. And what we figured out was that if we assume that you’re going to buy an $800,000 house, we’ve already established that your sinking fund was going to be about $187,000 and that’s even above and beyond your $30,000 emergency fund, right? So you have $187,000 you can use. We said if we just used $150,000 for that and there’s another $30,000 in there—maybe it’s for a car, maybe it’s for a garden, maybe it’s for moving cost, whatever—if you had $150,000 that you had from the sinking fund and you had home equity of another $325,000, you have a big down payment you get to put on this house. And if we did a 30-year fixed rate mortgage, we just said, not knowing where rates would be, what would that monthly mortgage rate be if it was a 6% interest rate or a 5%? Again, we’re sort of guessing at what it could be 5 to seven years from now. But you see that even though you’re moving into a more expensive house, the mortgage payment goes from a little under $2,000 to somewhere between $2,500 to $2,700 a month 5 to seven years in the future, right? That’d give you a whole lot of anxiety or you feel like we could probably—

Sorcha: Right. Because we’re not raising kids anymore.

Bo: It seems manageable. It seems feasible, right? And it’s because you’ve done—you’ve made the decisions and done the things to be in a position where okay, even if my mortgage is going to be higher. Money is nothing more than a tool that allows us to do the things we want to do. And one of the things we know we want to do is we want to live in a different part of the country. And we recognize there are costs with that and tradeoffs with that. And one of the trade-offs is more expensive housing, but it sounds like that’s something you guys are okay with and you guys are comfortable with.

Dan: Yeah. And the way that my job pays, I have a salary and then I have a commission base. And the commission I do—we do get in more than just the $2,500 periodically, not all the time. And so those I tend to just throw into this. So the savings rate of $2,500 is probably on the conservative side.

Bo: Wonderful. So it could actually even look potentially a little bit better than this.

The Three Ingredients of Wealth (26:58)

Brian: We talk about all the time on the show, the three ingredients to wealth. You guys are crushing the first two ingredients because you think about the fact of discipline, living on less than you make. You guys do that. You’ve done that even from the beginning. Yes, you weren’t able to build a lot of margin initially because life was just absorbing it all. But as you made more money, you kept the focus on, “hey, there’s something bigger we want to do with our money.” So, you had the discipline. So, then when your income finally caught traction, that margin, the difference between the two that created the money, y’all actually put it to work. Because so often in our comments section, people say, “No, we have to assume this about everybody.” Because nobody actually saves and invest. You guys are what happens to people who say, “No, you know what? We’re going to be very deliberate on how we spend our money. We’re going to let our life reflect what we want, but then as we make more money, we’re not going to lose our mind in this consumption society we live in and just start throwing money left and right out the door. We’re going to kind of let it focus.”

Stress Testing the Plan (27:58)

Brian: So, I love that we get to save at this rate, but we wanted to put some grace in the system because even good systems can have breaking points because college is expensive. And y’all have even thrown up some things that we didn’t know. This is news to us about the new car, the garden. I just want to make sure we want to put some flex in the system just in case y’all go through this and maybe housing’s a little bit more expensive than we have modeled here or maybe college is a little bit more expensive because y’all move sooner or something happens, right? So, we wanted to—because that 30% savings rate is pretty aggressive.

Bo: Well, and we know that one of the things that we always try to counsel people on who are thinking about changing locations and moving is we often think about housing. Okay, was housing more expensive or housing less expensive? But it’s not just housing that affects cost of living. We want to look at various cost of living in different parts of the country. And so we actually did an analysis comparing where you are at in Texas relative to Vancouver, Washington because I think that was one of the places you kind of put on your short list. And what you can see is we’ve already analyzed housing is more expensive. It’s like 11% more, but utilities are a little bit less expensive. Food costs a little bit more both in terms of groceries and eating out. You guys are not going to eat out, so it’s going to be the grocery cost. Health care is actually a lot more expensive in Vancouver, Washington than it is in Denton, Texas. Transportation is more expensive. Normal goods and services are more expensive. And income is actually down about 6% relatively. So if you kind of consolidate and conglomerate all of those, it’s about 5% on average more expensive to live in Vancouver, Washington than Texas.

Reduced Savings Rate Scenario (29:40)

Bo: So with all the variables that Brian mentioned, “Hey, okay, we might have a car and we might have more for college and then we know that this is going to be a more expensive place,” what if the 30% savings rate is not something that we can sustain? Because we already showed you if you didn’t think a whole lot about college and you didn’t have to replace a car and you didn’t have to move to another part of the country, the plan looks great. But your plan that you want is not to stay where you are doing the things that you’re doing. You have other plans that you want to do because you recognize money is just a tool. So we said, “Okay, how’s this look? If while you’re living in Denton, Texas, you can maintain this savings rate. We’ve shown that we can pay for college, but what about when we make this change? What if we can’t save at the same rate?” Either because of income changes or just because of life being more expensive. And what if we had to drop our savings rate down to 20% starting when we move up to the Pacific Northwest. And what you can see is yeah, it changes the numbers. They do decrease. Now at age 55, instead of having $2.5 million, you have $2.3 million. Instead of at age 60 having $4.1 million, you have $3.5 million. And then at full retirement, yeah, not being able to save that extra 10% made a substantial significant change. Instead of being $6.5 million, you have $5.7 million. But you can see even with a portfolio of $5.7 million in the Pacific Northwest with a mortgage somewhere between $2,500 to $2,700 a month, we could still count on this portfolio to generate about $116,000—almost $10,000 a month in income for you guys to be able to live off of. And so my question is that a worthwhile tradeoff?

Dan: I think that you are two of the only people I’ve ever seen who could actually truly explain the difference in lifestyle between a $6.5 million and a $5.7 million portfolio because I can’t see the difference in that.

Bo: Right. Because it’s hard. It’s hard when you think about that.

Sorcha: Well, because part of the reason that we want to move there is because we want to just be able to walk around outside, you know, like just want to take in the ferns and take in the air. It’s literally a day-to-day experience.

Dan: It’s a day-to-day experience.

Sorcha: So for us, it’s not like, “oh, we want to in our retirement, it’d be nice to travel a bit,” you know, to have some flexibility, but I don’t think we’re going to be cruising around or backpacking Europe at this aggressive level that some folks we know have done.

The Five Levels of Wealth (31:55)

Bo: I just love so much that you guys begin with the end in mind. I mean, as I’m sitting here hearing you talk, we talk all the time about the five levels of wealth and everybody wants to get to financial independence where it’s “I want to do what I want, when I want, how I want.” But there is this second level. There is this level above that where you actually know what you value and what brings you purpose. And that’s what you guys are talking about. Like we—yeah, we could have more money and it’d be cool to have $6.5 million. What we really want to be is be somewhere that we love doing the things that we love. And money will allow us to get there, but money is not the thing that we’re pursuing. We’re pursuing the things that we actually value. And that’s awesome.

Brian: When I looked at this chart, the things that got me excited was really the spread between 55 and 60 because I know how you guys spend currently. Because remember this is in present value terms. And yes, things are potentially going to be more expensive when you move to the Pacific Northwest, but it’s probably going to fall somewhere between the numbers we have between 55 and 60. And what I love is hearing you guys talk with such passion. There’s a good chance y’all might decide somewhere in that 5-year window—this is enough, you know, and you can own your time that much sooner and just live your life at that point. You don’t have to work until you’re 65.

Dan: You want to know what the secret of 20 years of marriage is? Have something to do. So Dan travels a bit for work, right? Retiring right now—I can tell you that much. I’m not looking for, you know, we hear the FIRE and all that stuff. It’s uninteresting to me, honestly. I think that, you know, retirement is the number one killer.

Brian: But you know what’s the best type of work? When you get to choose to do the work. There is something about owning your life completely and making the choice when you wake up in the morning is that “I’m making the world a little bit better by going” and this gives me fulfillment to go to work versus a lot of times in your life, if you really think about it, you’re not working always because you want to. You’re working because you have to pay the bills. You’re working because of the obligation to the kids. It’s a different mindset when you do it out of choice.

Questions and Homework (33:58)

Bo: Any questions for us? Because I believe it or not, I actually have some homework. It seems like there’s—because you guys—we’ve given you a really rosy picture here. We’ve shown what it can be, but there are some things you have to do to actually move in this direction. Any questions you have for us?

Backdoor Roth Compliance Question (34:10)

Dan: Specific questions. Yes. So to kind of dial back to 2020, the first thing that got me—and you had asked earlier, Brian, you know, “hey, so when did you actually start doing this, you know, the Roth and the 401(k) and all that?”—it was in 2020. I had sold all the bullion and I was just like, “okay, just trying to stay out of debt. What do I got to do?” And because we were moving backwards and I actually found—what is it? JL Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth, right? And I said, “oh, but this guy gets it, right?” And so I said, “I don’t have a Roth. I don’t have a this. I don’t have a that.” And Sorcha, I’m sure, remembers, I had gathered every weird little piece of paper from every single account that we’d ever have. The question I have is that I had old 401(k)s and so did Sorcha, retirement accounts that we put into that because I was looking at, “wow, what’s the percentage we’re paying over there versus, oh, Vanguard’s only .04% or whatever it was.” And so, but now that our income is at a point where I’m worried—I’m not investing actively in the Roth right now because I’m worried at the end of the year we’re going to exceed what we’re going to do. So I really would love to hear more explicitly what is the actual—maybe that’s part of the homework. What is the actual process for getting back into backdoor Roth conversion compliance because I know that we’re not right now.

Bo: Right. Well, let’s look at your net worth first because that’s a super helpful place to start. So you already mentioned you have these traditional IRAs that exist and you have one has about $22,000 and Sorcha yours has about $20,000. So based on your current account structure, you couldn’t do backdoor Roths. If you were to do a non-deductible traditional IRA contribution and then try to convert that, it would be taxable because of the pro rata rule. The IRS would say, “okay, what’s your after tax contribution relative to all of your IRA balances,” right? So the only way you get around that is you have to make your IRA balances go down to zero. So if we look at your current account structure, you have Roths and you have 401(k)s and you have rollovers. If you wanted to be backdoor Roth compliant, one of the things that you would be able to do is you could consolidate your accounts to where your Roths would stay the exact same, but you would want to think about sourcing your rollover IRA that you have, assuming that your 401(k) is good and low cost and you like the investment options.

Dan: Fidelity is wonderful.

Bo: You could actually roll that rollover IRA into your 401(k), thereby doing away with that rollover. And Dan, again, you could do the exact same thing, assuming that you have a really good 401(k) that’s low cost.

Dan: We won’t mention the company for that.

Bo: You could actually consolidate that into your 401(k) as well. Now, one of the things I want to make sure that you think through is I don’t know where these traditional rollovers came from, but a lot of times we’ll see people blindly just roll them over all the way, not remembering, “oh, you know, this actual—I made this contribution traditional a number of years ago, but I didn’t get to take a deduction. I’ve actually got some after tax basis in there.” You just want to make sure before you roll it into the 401(k)s, are those dollars all actually in fact pre-tax?

Dan: I can 99% guarantee they all came from a 401(k) rollover.

Bo: Perfect. If that’s the case, then you can roll them in. Once you get this new account structure where all you have are 401(k)s and Roths, now you’re set up that every single year, you can do a $7,000 non-deductible contribution to a traditional IRA. And you can convert that traditional IRA contribution into a Roth, thereby completing the backdoor Roth conversion.

Dan: Right within Vanguard’s own structure or Fidelity or—

Bo: That’s right. Whoever—whatever custodian you’re using.

Brian: And I’m pretty sure most 401(k)s now have auto invest functions. But just always tell people when you bring assets in, it’s usually a two-part transaction, meaning that when the money hits the account, check that. Make sure you got all the money you’re supposed to. And then the second thing is the part two is make sure it gets invested. Because one of my biggest—I hate when we do react episodes to people who do the right thing by getting money into these retirement accounts, but they just let it sit in cash. So that’s one question. I’ll give us a check box on that one. What’s question number two?

Life Insurance Question (38:00)

Dan: Question number two is I feel very uneducated with insurance needs. What is the minimum that I need to have here that makes sense for what our situation is?

Bo: One of the things that we’ve kind of shown you guys here is that you’re on a great trajectory, but you’re not there yet. And right now, when you look at your investment portfolio, you got about $250,000. If you were to get hit by a bus when you walk out of the studio, that’s likely not going to be enough to provide for Sorcha and the kids. And same thing reciprocally, right? So, we would argue that there is an insurable need on each of your lives. And so, then the question becomes, how much? Well, there’s a really easy rule of thumb. You can do 10 times your income. I mean, a lot of people like to start there, but we think it can go even a step further. Since you’ve given us all the information, we understand, okay, based on your age and based on when we think you’re going to retire, we know how much your income needs to be saved between now and retirement. And we know that we have this college funding goal and we know that we have this mortgage goal. So, we can actually add all of those numbers together and sort of reverse engineer into a net present value calculation of what is your true insurable need.

Life Insurance Analysis (39:01)

Bo: And we actually did this for each of you. So Dan, for you, you can see that right now, if we assume a $215,000 income, we assume a retirement age of age 65, we know your mortgage is right at about $240,000, we know your portfolio is at about $250,000. If we just assumed a 6% rate of return on your investments and a 3% inflation rate, relatively conservative assumptions on purpose—you want to be conservative—we reverse engineer this back, we could come up with today, we would argue that the life insurance need that you would have to be able to satisfy those future goals, it would be about $2.3 million, right? It’s funny. It does come out to roughly 10 times income. You know, it’s neat how that works out, but about $2.3 million. You may have said, “Oh, it’s a scam. I don’t want to pay for this.” What’s great is you guys are 42, which is still young. Like, that is not—you guys are not aged yet. And so, we actually went and ran some quotes for you. A $2 million 20-year term policy would only cost about $170 bucks a month. Or if you only wanted a million dollar policy for 20 years, you could do it for about $85 a month. So this is very, very affordable insurance. It does protect you in the event that you do get hit by that bus.

Sorcha: This is term.

Bo: This is term insurance.

Sorcha: Only term—because that’s what I’ve had forever.

Bo: All you really need to have in place is enough to get you to financial independence. It’s not like you need this insurance in your 70s and 80s because you guys are going to save in such a way by 65 you’re financially independent. So if you have life insurance through work, you would obviously decrease this. If you had current policies, you would decrease it. But the total amount of insurance we think you need would probably about $2.3 million. Okay.

Brian: And we also did use a preferred policy, but it’s not preferred plus. Meaning that you might be the specimen that’s hiking every year. You might—this might even be cheaper. I think we call that the Bo insurance. We wanted to put something in here so that you could at least—everybody who’s watching this content—be like “man I’ve heard all these bad things about insurance but it sounds like term life insurance” which would just—you’re buying the insurance only. There’s no investment component or anything else that bells and whistles that people are putting out there. It’s much more digestible and it probably will feel like you’re paying an HOA fee—but an HOA fee that will feel good either, honestly. But an HOA fee that will at least protect your family—pay some dividends on it.

Bo: Yeah. All right. So, that’s for you, Dan. Sorcha, we did the exact same thing for you. Same sort of assumption, same sort of timeline, $65,000 income assumption, same retirement age, mortgage, investments, rate of return, inflation, all the same. And we would argue that you have an insurable need of about $625,000. Again, we’d price this a $750,000 just nice round number. A 15-year policy for you would cost about $45 a month or a half a million dollar 15-year policy would cost about $30.

Brian: It’s amazing. The ladies are always a good bit cheaper than you dudes. The actuaries quickly show you why it’s better to buy insurance as a lady.

Bo: And so we would argue that you guys certainly have an insurable need on each of your lives. You will need to arrive at the conclusion. Do we want 20-year policies? Do we want 15-year policies, do we want 10-year policies? Do we want to go $2 million, $750,000? Like there’s a push and pull there based on your comfort level. But you ought to have something in place because it is incredibly affordable and it’s not a difficult thing to do. And now’s a great time to do it as you have basically this 20-year window while you’re building into financial independence.

Homework (42:26)

Bo: All right, you ready for your homework?

Dan: Yeah.

Bo: Okay, here we go. Research life insurance. We want you to look into life insurance because we do believe that you have an insurable need for each one of you. Number two, given your income is increasing and you have a desire to build Roth assets and continue to build Roth assets, you should look at the backdoor Roth conversion consolidation. You’d have to get those IRAs into the 401(k) so you consolidate. Number three, keep doing the things that you’re doing. Obviously, we showed you this fantastic picture of where the future looks like—$6 million, which is amazing—but that’s not where you guys are today. You guys today, you’re at $250,000. So, there’s the hike from where you are today to the top of the mountain is still a pretty severe hike. So, you got to make sure you keep doing the work. You’re doing a great job with your kids. Encourage them to continue doing the things that they’re doing because if they really do graduate with associate’s degree, all three of them, it cuts the cost of college in half and it’s going to set them up for the remainder of their life. And then the last one I put was keep dreaming. Right now, you guys have this vision of where you want to be. I would encourage you keep dreaming about the things you want to be doing. Okay? What does chapter 2.0 look like? Maybe retirement is not something that you guys ultimately do, but maybe transitioning to the next endeavor is the thing that you guys do in your 50s, in your 60s, and based on the trajectory you’re on, you’re going to have the ability to write that ticket.

Closing (43:45)

Brian: Bo, if somebody else wanted to come on Making a Millionaire, where do they go?

Bo: Yeah, if you want to be a guest on Making a Millionaire, you can go to moneyguy.com/apply. Or if you want to check out any of our free tools and resources, you can go to moneyguy.com/resources.

Brian: This has been an absolute blast. Thank you all for coming on guys. I’m your host Brian Preston joined by Mr. Bo Hanson. Thank you so much. Money Guy team out.