Don’t Fall For These Market Trends with Austin Hankwitz ​

Introduction – Welcome Austin Hankwitz (0:00)

Brian: Hey, hey, hey. We got a special one coming for you today. Don’t fall for these market trends.

Bo: Brian, I am so excited because today we have a very special guest. We have Austin Hankwitz who’s a finance content creator, an entrepreneur, an investor, all things finance. Austin, thanks so much for hanging out with us today.

Austin: Thanks for having me. I’m so excited to be here.

Bo: Hey, that’s my line.

Austin: Come on, guys. No, I’ve lived in Nashville now for seven, eight years, and I’m surprised we haven’t done this sooner.

Bo: I know. I love it. And I love that you’re here hanging out with us today.

Austin:

Brian: I always like when things just fall into place like they’re supposed to. And let me give you some scoop on this, Austin. I have a dear friend named Mark who kind of follows our content and he’s come to the studio, got some insight for how he should be working with his business and using social media. And he came to me and this is probably this was about a month ago, month and a half. And he goes, “Hey, there’s a guy who lives in our neck of the woods. His name is Austin. He has this podcast called Rich Habits podcast. You ought to do something with him.” So I then go to Rebie and I said, “Hey, my buddy who kind of has his pulse on things says we should do something with this guy named Austin.” And she goes, “Good news. He’s already scheduled to come in.” And I was like, “This is my life. I live in this serendipitous type life where just everything I stumble around and everything falls right into place. It all comes together.” Welcome to the show, Austin.

Austin: Thank you so much. Rich Habits podcast. It’s been a blast. Very excited to be here.

Austin’s Background and Content Journey (2:19)

Bo: For those who don’t know or maybe have not come across, give us a little background. Who are you? What do you talk about? How’d you get into the content creation game?

Austin: Yeah. So, more about me. I’m 29. I turn 30 here in May. Graduated from the University of Tennessee. Go Vols. Okay. Back in we can edit that part out. Back in 2018, got my degree in finance and economics. I moved to Nashville to do mergers and acquisitions for a large healthcare company. But I’ve always been this weird money nerd. Weirdly enough, I credit it to Dave Ramsey. He came to my high school back when I was in high school to talk about the baby steps and I was like, “Whoa, Roth IRA, this is interesting. I’m 16 years old learning about this stuff. It’s insane.” And so now, fast forward, call it 10, 12, 15 years after that, I’ve just always been intrigued about personal finance and investing. And so what happened was during the pandemic, instead of lip-syncing and dancing on TikTok, I decided I was going to talk about how I plan to pay off my student loans, grow my credit score, and invest for my retirement. And so it wasn’t like a hey, you know, I was 24, right? It wasn’t like a hey, I’m some sort of expert. It was a listen, I’m going to make some mistakes, come along for the ride. And people appreciated that. Yeah, 100%. And I think there’s something to be said about radical transparency. And so that whole time I was like, “Listen, I’ve got a bunch of VTI right here. Here’s what I’ve got inside this Roth IRA. Here’s my credit cards that I’m trying to use and I pay this one off and here’s how much I owe on my student loans. Come along for the journey, right?” And people appreciated that. And so now, you know, fast forward years and years into it. I was doing this full-time in March of 2021. Started newsletters, podcasts, doing a lot of marketing consulting for fintech companies like Public.com and Charles Schwab and things like that. But then we also started investing into some pre-IPO names as well along the way, which has been a lot of fun. But the Rich Habits podcast was started in February of 2021 as a way for myself and my co-host Robert Croak, who shout out to Silly Bands. You guys know Silly Bands, those bracelets?

Brian: Yeah.

Austin: So, he started Silly Bands back in 2007, 2008. You didn’t know that? Yeah. So, now $300 million of revenue later and he’s just having a good time. Now he’s 60. I’m 30 and we’re just sharing our perspectives along the way. He’s this sort of elder statesman, entrepreneur, veteran. I’m a guy who’s 30 years younger trying to figure it out, trying to build my own business and invest the right way. And the show is made for anyone in between, right? You can be younger, you can be older, whatever, any experience that you can just take back control of your money, implement the right rich habits. And it’s been fun, man. It’s been a lot of fun.

Core Satellite Investing Strategy (4:56)

Bo: I love that. So it sounds like a lot of what you talk about, the content you go through was studying market trends and looking at that kind of stuff, right?

Austin: I would say yes, but on the same token, it’s important to have an active management perspective with your portfolio, not so you’re always making changes because no one can time the market, but because you can now go into whatever the market’s doing with your eyes wide open. I think a lot of people make the mistake of saying I’m going to go diversify into some crypto or I’m going to do this sector I have no idea about. Then when it goes down 30%, 40%, they’re surprised. And we want to make sure people like if you are diversifying or if you are trying to do something with an asset class or some sort of strategy that’s new to you that you go into it eyes wide open where like hey listen this is the volatility that can come with it and here’s we’re all just trying to have that kind of perspective on what’s moving the markets and how it might impact you and your money.

Bo: So how do you reconcile that with this perspective you want to be a little more active and know kind of what you’re doing there but also this idea of passive investing, buying low-cost index funds? Because you’ve said I already heard you say VTI, right? You like VTI. How do you marry those two concepts together?

Austin: I’m sure you guys have I’m not I didn’t come up with the strategy but it’s called the core satellite investing portfolio strategy, right? So we’ll call it 65% to 85% of your portfolio is in the boring index funds and ETFs that we all love and talk about. But then the other 15% to 35% is diversified into things that are really interesting to you. If that is, hey, maybe I want to dabble in the dark arts of international stocks here or there. Maybe I want to do a little cryptocurrency or some precious metals, right? Gold and silver have been all over. So, it’s like having a little bit of mix knowing that the vast majority of your portfolio and your net worth are in these tried-and-true index funds that are going to go up into the right over a long period of time. But if you do want to have a little bit of nibble, call it low single digits in some cryptocurrency, some Bitcoin, rock and roll, man. That’s fine. Because the cool thing about it is if you experience that 40%, 70%, heck, it can go to zero. If you’ve got 95% of your net worth over here and 5% of it goes to zero, well, congrats. You still have 95% of your net worth, right?

Bo: So, you’re saying it’s more the extra. We have a friend of the show that says you want to do that kind of stuff with the vacation money, not with the grocery money.

Austin: That’s exactly the way you want to sort of navigate that. Yeah. My friend Chris Camillo, I’m not sure if you guys know who he is. He’s an incredible social arbitrage trader. He’s always with Graham and Jack on their show. He just did a great episode with them, I think two or three days ago. But Chris does a really good job explaining that if you want to have some of this sort of higher risk bucket, it should not come from the groceries. It comes from trade-offs that you do throughout your life. Hey, I’m not going to go to Starbucks this week so I can save $3, $7, $10, $12, $15. And that $15 now goes to that higher risk idea, right? So it’s not from the index fund money. It’s not from things that are going to continue to allow you to build wealth over time. It’s going to come from different trade-offs or that side hustle or whatever you’re doing. It’s money you wouldn’t have had, right?

Learning from Investment Mistakes (8:09)

Bo: I’m super curious because you said one of the things that’s been great about your experience has been you said, “Hey, come along for this ride with me. Come along and do this thing.” Have there been investments that you’ve made or things that were interesting and unique to you where you’re like, “Oh gosh, maybe that one wasn’t maybe instead of doing that, I should have just gone S&P 500.” What’s happened?

Austin: Yes, absolutely. And I think a lot of people made this mistake, right? We rewind back to the COVID-induced bubble we experienced in the stock market. And I think everyone knows or knew who Cathie Wood was, right? She had this she was the darling of the stock market. She had the ARK ETF. It was like this big innovation fund. Everyone’s talking about it. Everyone’s investing into it. And I was one of those. I was like, “This is so cool. It’s just going crazy. All these fund names are going off.” And then February of 2021 happens and it kind of does one of these and it comes back down, you’re like, “Oh, it’s okay. It’ll recover, I’m sure.” Right? Rode that sucker all the way down. And it’s one of those things where it’s an opportunity to learn, right? It’s in that high-risk bucket. It’s in that satellite side of the portfolio where it’s like, okay, this is money that was not taken from, you know, let’s call it the S&P or the NASDAQ or things that go up into the right over a long period of time.

Brian: But I always find it interesting because I’ve had neighbors that when they find out what I do for a living before they really find out what I do for a living, they start telling me about their stock picks and other things. And I’ve got one I consider him a success case because he came to me probably four to five years into our relationship with each other after he had moved next door. He’s moved away since. He’s like, “You know what? I finally have caught on.” And he goes, “You know, a lot of those things when I was telling you about Fitbit and all the other stuff, I’ve realized that the S&P just when I look at my annual performance, that’s what drove the majority.” And that ties into what you’re sharing. So, a lot of when you get into the weeds with this, how much of this should be hobby? Like, you get true excitement and it’s entertainment versus, you know, and you’ve already said with the core satellite, but I just want to know because that’s the thing. I don’t want people to lose out on the excitement because all human nature is the shiny objects. I can tell you I’ve heard more about silver this year, you know, really from last year, all this huge run-up than I’ve heard from silver. So we always are and literally I can point to this is a shiny object that everybody’s infatuated with right now because of just recency bias and what happened. But it is one of those things where at the end of the day is there a core belief that the index funds if you don’t find satisfaction in this it’s okay if you set it and forget it as well.

Austin: It absolutely is encouraged to set it and forget it. It’s not just okay. It’s like that’s what you should be doing full stop in your retirement accounts. Set it and forget it. This is not you’re not playing games with your retirement, right? We don’t want to play games with our nest egg. But something that I really enjoy explaining to people because you talked about hobby and think about this. I’m a firm believer that and I think Amazon’s a great example for this. If you are someone that is shopping at Amazon a lot, you have a Costco subscription, maybe you have an American Express credit card, insert publicly traded company here that you very intimately understand. I think it’s okay to be an owner of companies where you’re customers. And I think that’s powerful because at the end of the day, I think the stats like 90% of Americans do not own equity in the stock market. Like they don’t get to experience that upside. And if I’m able to explain to someone like, “Hey, you might not understand the S&P. I get that.” You’re intimidated by it. But you know how Amazon works. Yeah, I’ve got the app on my phone. I just bought something on it. Like, okay, cool. What if I could tell you that you could put as little as $10, a slice of a stock into Amazon, so you own a little bit of equity in the company that you’re a customer of. And that’s like a light bulb moment for a lot of people where it’s like, okay, cool. So, I’m no longer just a customer, but I’m now an equity owner in this company that’s profiting off of me. And I think that that is just where everyone should start.

Brian: I do agree because I will say, look, you do this long enough. I’ve been fortunate enough I don’t really do individual stocks, but I’ve been fortunate enough that I’ve had one or two products that I was so enamored with that I did go buy the stock and then when you ever have a holding that crosses a 1,000% return, you’re like, that’s a moonshot. It’s like, holy cow, a little turns into something pretty incredible. But I just want people I want you to not feel like you have to do it because I feel like sometimes young investors, they don’t know what to do with their first dollar, much less what to do with their bonuses and we’re trying to get them into Roth and just doing that’s where the Financial Order of Operations kind of came from. Totally. But I just don’t want people to feel pressure that they have to get into some of this stuff where that’s probably not where you start the journey. You start the journey with the boring tried-and-true. Don’t put pressure on yourself that doesn’t need to exist. And then as you get deeper, definitely if you find a passion for it, go for it. Look for the permanent portfolio type investments. But I love you’re very transparent on that and I appreciate you being so open with us.

Austin: Yeah. No, absolutely. And you mentioned the hobby aspect of it, too. It’s so funny. I don’t think people have the time to do all of the research that they should do before owning a single stock, right? Or should do before they go own some sort of thematic ETF or a precious metal or something. And honestly, I don’t think people want to go do that research, right? So, it’s like at the end of the day, just go buy the index funds, go buy the VTIs of the world and yeah, Dow Jones Industrial Average, all that stuff. Just go ride the wave.

Filtering News vs Noise (13:58)

Bo: Well, I think what ends up happening is people they think, “Okay, I’m going to do this thing. I’m going to go buy this stock that I’m interested in or I want to start playing in one of these little things,” but then what ends up happening is it begins to captivate your attention, right? Like even though you have 95% of your stuff over here doing this boring old stuff, you’re paying attention to this 3%, 5% thing. So, one thing that we have to do as investors is figure out, okay, when it comes to things going on in the financial world, how do we discern between the things that are actually newsworthy that we should be paying attention to and what’s the noise? What are the distractions? What are the things that we should not? Because I know that I see especially young people who get it out of order like exactly what Brian said, they will focus on that 3% to 5% and allow that to affect their decision-making rather than ignoring it and kind of saying, “No, you know what? Doesn’t matter what’s happening this day, this week, this month, this quarter, I’m going to be okay.” Would you agree that that’s what happens when young people start on that path too early?

Austin: Yes, I would agree. I think that a good analogy to think about when it comes to investing, if it’s in the stock market in general or a single stock, whatever is going on, is comparing the stock market sort of to a pendulum. It’s always way over excited, everything’s crazy or it’s doom and despair. It’s never just in the middle, right? A pendulum swings back and forth, back and forth. And I think to your point of is it noise, is it crazy? Is it newsworthy? Where are we at? Like just all the emotion, right? Because it’s money. Money is emotional. Money is a very emotional thing. And no, I totally agree. I think a lot of people make the mistake of being in that pendulum cycle. Oh my gosh, wait, so Amazon spending $200 billion next year. Is that good or is it bad? Wall Street thinks it’s bad. But they also have the just back and forth news back and forth. It’s crazy. Where if you kind of just take a beat here, take a step back, look at it, and say, well, we know over a long period of time the S&P goes up, you know, call it 8.5% adjusted for inflation. You can say whatever about the other indices. I don’t know what their specific performances are with the NASDAQ or the Dow Jones, but I’m sure it’s up until the right over a long period of time, right? So, it’s just important to discern the difference.

News or Noise Game (16:05)

Bo: Well, so I think one of the things that we were talking about and I think was this Rebie’s idea? Did Rebie come up with this?

Rebie: I can’t take all the credit. This was a team idea.

Bo: Y’all came up with an idea of a fun little exercise we can walk through to see how good we are at discerning.

Rebie: Yes. We are going to get to the Q&A soon, so get your questions in the chat. But first, we’re going to play a little game. It’s called News or Noise. So, we were just discussing, we see financial headlines all the time. Some of them could be positive, but let’s be honest, a lot of them are doom and gloom, right? A little scary, a little confusing maybe. So, we are all about cutting through the noise. So we are going to play a game where I will read a real financial headline of the very recent past and you guys will tell me is it news which you have a paddle that you can hold a thumbs up you should pay attention to this for some reason or is it just noise we don’t need to worry too much about that in our personal finance.

Brian: Is there any ability because I don’t like you know I like to talk. So is there any editorial feature involved?

Rebie: Oh yes, you get to tell say why I would challenge you to keep it to like 20-ish seconds. That’s our challenge. Okay.

Brian: Okay. 20 seconds. I feel like there’s always this new this is a new trend where they put me especially on us. They’re taking away my filibuster options.

Rebie: All right. Let’s dive into the first headline. It says, “OpenAI is unsatisfied with some Nvidia chips and looking for alternatives, sources say.” Is this news or noise?

[All three hold up “noise” paddles]

Rebie: Everybody says it’s noise. Why do you think it’s noise?

Brian: Well, I mean, unless, you know, like I said, I have dear friends that they’re all crazy and they’ve jumped into the Nvidia trend, but I don’t personally own that. So, that’s noise to me because I’m more of buying the market, being part of the market instead of trying to beat the market.

Austin: I think it’s noise because at the end of the day, AI is here to stay, right? OpenAI is going to be here. But it doesn’t matter whose chips they use or whatever. As long as they’re making profit I mean a billion people around the world every week use ChatGPT, right? So it doesn’t really matter whose chips are used as long as they have good customers and good products.

Bo: Yeah, I would say the exact same thing. For me, something that’s newsworthy means there’s an action or a takeaway I should have from that. When I hear that, there’s no action for me. I’m not involved with how OpenAI makes their decisions. So I’m going to let them make their decisions and then I’ll just get to participate in the broad market.

Rebie: All right. Here’s a headline. It says, “This tech stock just crashed to a 52-week low. Should you buy the dip?” Is it news or noise?

[All three hold up “noise” paddles]

Rebie: Everyone says noise again. All right. Why do you think it’s noise?

Brian: Here’s what’s interesting to me. If that would have been the S&P 500 is at a 52-week low because that would be more of a market-type experience. I have a whole protocol when we hit bear market status to how I think about and I get myself as a financial mutant excited. But individual tech stock that’s more of a headline to get my eyeballs than it is for action.

Austin: Took it. Yes, that’s exactly. It’s an eyeball. It’s a click. It’s come look at this. It’s trading at a low. Do you buy?

Bo: Yeah. Should you buy the dip or should you always be buying? I like always be buying.

Rebie: There we go. We can use that. Yeah, that was free. Okay. Next headline is “Dow ends over 500 points up. S&P 500 finishes just shy of a new record after strong January manufacturing data.” This one’s about the S&P. What do you think? News or noise?

[Austin holds up “news,” Brian and Bo hold up “noise”]

Rebie: All right, let’s go. We got a little split here. So, let’s let Austin go first. Austin says news. Why do you think it’s news, Austin?

Austin: I think it’s news because at the end of the day, if the S&P and the Dow Jones are trading at or near all-time highs, that means that the underlying because the economy and the stock market are not the same thing, and I think we all know that. But good news about the economy tends to drive the stock market. And I think it’s a newsworthy headline to know that the economy is trending in the right direction. Therefore, the stock market seems to be trending in the right direction from this headline. So, I think this is something I would click on and I’d read more about. I’d want to know the January manufacturing data. I’d want okay, cool. This sounds good. I’d actually click on this story.

Rebie: All right, Bo.

Bo: I think it’s Nick Murray who said, “Man, if you think that the stock market is high today, wait till you see it 10 years from now.” And so, I think the market, if it truly is a yo-yo that’s going up and down as you go up a mountain, we’re always going to be hitting all-time highs. So, for me, there’s nothing actionable in there.

Brian: Yeah. If you look at the data of bull markets, how long they run versus how short bear markets are, there is a progression where we keep going higher and higher and nobody knows. Now, look, it’s important for you to have an allocation that’s good before, during, and after that reflects your goals and your mix of what you can handle from a risk perspective. Since I’m already assuming since you’re a financial mutant, you’ve checked the box on that, there’s nothing actionable I can do from all-time highs. Whereas, it’s the inverse of what I said. When we hit 20% down, that’s a bear market. There is something I can do and think like a contrarian on that. But all-time highs, because markets run for years, there’s nothing for me to do. I don’t think I kept at the 20 seconds.

Rebie: That’s all right. That was good discussion. Good discussion. Next one says, “Amazon’s latest layoffs add fuel to the white collar recession.” What do you think? News or noise?

[All three hold up “news” paddles]

Rebie: Bo says news. Brian says news. Austin says, “Oh man, I thought I was going to be contrarian.”

Brian: I thought we were all I literally picked that one because I thought I’ll let y’all go first to see I bet y’all say the same thing.

Austin: I am a firm believer and we just saw this with OpenClaw over the last couple weeks, if you guys have seen that or not, but agentic AI, robotics, embodied AI is what it’s called, right? This is coming for a lot of white collar and blue-collar jobs. And I think between Amazon laying off 30 or 40,000 employees since call it over the last 6 months and then Dow Inc. they laid off call it 10,000, 20,000 employees as well. I think this is newsworthy. I think people need to be paying attention. Now, is there an action to take? I don’t know. I’m not telling people to take that action. I can’t wait to hear. But I think this is something more people should be paying attention to. What do you say?

Brian: The action is that when I read a headline like this is this could be for you to internalize and ask yourself, do I have my own emergency reserves? Am I okay if this thing goes sideways? Because look, when it rains, it pours. When I wrote Millionaire Mission, I shared that and we changed the analogy and I give Daniel a lot of credit when Rebie and Daniel and I were brainstorming and we came up with rains and pours because I always try to create this visual where all the bad actors, meaning that the market gets its teeth kicked in, you go unemployed. It’s like all bad news hangs out together and smokes cigarettes together. So, it’s one of those things where you just need to know all these things are likely going to happen at once. So, it’s a good wakeup call for you to internalize that and say, “Hey, what’s going on in my house?” So, I can tend to my own garden so I don’t get caught in a bad situation.

Bo: Only thing I’ll add is I agree. I don’t think it’s newsworthy for the investment part. I think it’s more newsworthy for my vocation. Am I in a place where I need to be thinking about what my future career looks like, what my future opportunities look like? I don’t want to ignore that this thing is happening if it could potentially touch my world.

Rebie: Yeah. No, that’s good stuff. All right, we got a couple more before we head to the Q&A.

Brian: I thought I was contrarian on that one, too.

Rebie: Well, that was fun conversation. Anyway, next is “Erratic behavior of Bitcoin, silver, and meme stocks threatens to unnerve the bull market.”

[Austin and Brian hold up “noise,” Bo holds up “news”]

Rebie: Whoa. Okay, we got some more disagreement. Austin and Brian say it’s noise. Bo, you say it’s news.

Bo: Here’s why I say that’s news. I think that these things are so hot and people are so excited about the cryptos or the silver or the bullion or whatever the thing may be. Whenever there are headlines that show realistically how risky they can be, how much I want people to take note of that and recognize, oh, maybe this is not somewhere where I should allocate my dollars. Maybe this is not something I should be playing with because just because it’s gone up and to the right for a long long long long time and just because there was a 1,000% rate of return over this small fragment of time does not mean that that will persist into the future. So I think it’s news because it should be a deterrent from people jumping on the bandwagon at the wrong time for the wrong reasons.

Austin: So don’t do it with eating money.

Bo: Don’t do it with eating money.

Austin: I think that’s totally fair. If we think about market cycles and business cycles and things like that, I could be wrong here, but how I understand it is when you have these high beta risk-on asset classes like a Bitcoin or a meme stock, once they start to experience those climax tops and start to come down, sure, maybe that could be a newsworthy takeaway of like, wow, where could we be in the market cycle or what’s going on there, but to me, it’s just clicks.

Brian: Yeah, that’s great.

Rebie: Well, that was fun. I like that we have

Brian: Oh, come on. I want more of those.

Rebie: Always great. Well, I want to answer some people’s questions. Are you okay with that? Okay.

Live Q&A – 40% Income on Rent at 24 (25:52)

Rebie: Some value. No, I do have some questions queued up for the guys to answer. Also, due to Bo and Brian’s personal request, we will be doing a rapid fire segment towards the end of this episode. So, if you would like if you have a question and are watching live and would like it to be answered rapid fire style, go ahead and just write RF at the beginning of your question in the live chat and we will add that to the queue for the rapid fire round.

Brian: And cookie-wise on what gives this makes it unique is that we’re still going to keep this at 60 seconds. Yes. So, we’re all math-minded people. 60 divided by three is 20 seconds.

Rebie: You guys will have to work.

Brian: Oh, I failed at it on the first attempt. Let’s see what we do on take two.

Rebie: All right, we’re going to start off.

Brian: It’s 40, 10 and 10.

Bo: You can take a little more. Come on now.

Brian: Did you see I got attacked. There was a mugging that just occurred.

Bo: I didn’t say you were the 40. I didn’t say that. Nobody assumed that.

Brian: Can neither confirm nor deny.

Rebie: Okay, let’s go on to Jake’s question. This is not rapid fire. He says, “Hey, Money Guy. I’m 24 with no debt. I’m making $130K a year with a $25K emergency fund and $70K invested. That’s $50K in tax brokerage and $20K in Roth. I’m wondering if it’s okay to move into an apartment that would take 40% of my income.”

Brian: You may want to recap. Your home buying rules and guidelines say your housing expenses really shouldn’t go beyond 25% of your gross income. Y’all want the old man to answer or do y’all want to jump in first?

Rebie: I think I’d like to hear the old man answer.

Brian: Old man first. So first of all, Jake, congratulations. You’re doing so well. I see so many great I mean you’re bearing fruit. So the vine is doing a lot of good things right now. But I wonder if you’re paying if this is 40% of your income, you’re trying to live alone in this swanky place, go get a roommate. I mean, what happened to us all having roommates until we go get married? I had six roommates in college. I mean, the more the merrier. That’s what Bo and I joke I was joking with Bo because I think if we were the same age, we would have ended up being

Bo: We were roommates for a little bit. You and your wife were moving up here to Tennessee. Y’all lived with my wife and my family.

Brian: Old Big Spoon Bo here. But I definitely think that you’re doing so much right. I hate to derail that because you’re in that stacking stage of letting your army of dollar bills grow. Go get a roommate and all these dreams now you’re 20% of your income and that seems completely reasonable.

Austin: Yeah, completely agree. I think the most interesting sort of observation about this is I appreciate how Jake is going to focus on renting versus I’m going to go buy a house. I’m going to go put all this money, right? Because I’m pretty sure the stats right now show it is cheaper to rent at a lot of places than it is to go buy a house with a massive down payment and figure out what has to go into that. So Jake, I love your situation. You’re absolutely crushing it for 24 years old. $130,000 a year. You got the emergency fund. That’s incredible. Would love to see to their point that 40% turn to 20% or 25% or somewhere in that range. If it’s a roommate, if it’s just a different apartment, you don’t need you’re 24, dude. What are you living at the Ritz for? Come on.

Brian: That’s what I should have said. I like that analogy. That’s where I was going is why? Because apartment is just renting. It’s a short-term short-term obligation. Why are you picking a place that’s 40%? What’s your current rent? What are you paying right now?

Bo: We have said before that when it comes to buying a home, we do not love it. But we recognize that in some situations 25% may not be realistic on the home ownership side of things. And maybe you’re early in your career, you have a high income trajectory. And so for the moment you might have to be at 28% or 30%, but you know you’re going to get married or you know that you’re going to have an increase in pay or whatever. That’s different than hey you know what right now I can voluntarily and volitionally just go pay 40% of my income in rent. I think that’s likely an unforced error in this case that could be avoided.

Brian: Go and watch Roadhouse with Patrick Swayze, not the new updated one that Amazon Prime came out with like a year and a half ago. Go watch the original Roadhouse with Patrick Swayze. See if you can find it on TBS because it’ll cut out the nudity and all the cussing because that version is probably more appropriate for this show. But I want you to note that Patrick Swayze essentially lives in a barn on some land and it’s very modest and he was still the coolest cat in town and that’s what you ought to go with. You don’t have to have the Ritz Carlton place. I just think it’s hilarious Roadhouse at this point’s got to be what 40 years old? I’m old. I don’t care. But I feel like I am educating the masses here of the younger generation because they’re going to go watch that and be like I watched that one with Jake Gyllenhaal or whatever. Not the same thing. Conor McGregor, not the same thing.

Austin: No, just to reiterate though, I think it’s so important and I really want to hammer this home. As someone who was 24 that was making $65,000, $70,000 a year in my job, thinking I had made it and I’m going to go buy this cool car. I’m going to go do this thing at the expense of maxing out my Roth IRA at the expense of having a fully funded emergency fund. I promise you, you’re 24. No one cares where you live. No one cares about your apartment. If you can get over that ego, the faster you can get over it, the younger you are, you are going to set yourself up.

Brian: You can still get a significant other living in the Roadhouse barn.

Austin: I promise that is going to happen. Yes.

Live Q&A – Mortgage and High-Interest Debt (32:12)

Rebie: No, that’s good stuff. All right, let’s move on to-

Bo: Jake didn’t even know all the life advice he was going to get right there. He didn’t even know what was coming his way.

Rebie: I was hoping that you guys would have some good guidance. Somebody in the comments can tell us. Is there a way to watch these classic movies without all the other stuff too? Because I’m sure there’s some technology probably.

Brian: Because Bo and I had TBS. You know, if you grew up in Atlanta, you had the superstation that Ted Turner owned.

Rebie: Brian and Bo have a problem that they’ve sometimes remember seeing movies on TV and didn’t realize all of the content that was cut out of them.

Brian: Go watch Love Actually. Holy cow, that one will make you blush when if you watch it with the family after you watched it on TBS. It’s a different story line.

Rebie: It’s honestly delightful to see you realize things like this. Okay. We do have another question queued up. If you want to do rapid fire questions, be sure to get those in. Just put RF in front of your question. This next question is from Kelvin4659. It says, “I was looking at your slide for what qualifies as high-interest debt. I noticed that a mortgage was not on the list. What are your thoughts?” And just to recap, if you’re familiar with the FOO or the Financial Order of Operations, step three is to knock out that high-interest debt. So, what do you think? Do we have that slide that the content team can throw up there?

Bo: So, what counts? This is what Kelvin is referring to.

Austin: And this is a really interesting framework. I appreciate it when people create frameworks and rules like this. And you guys, this is really thoughtful.

Brian: Yeah. Well, but it’s even controversial inside of the Money Guy show, but we’ll save that for another day.

Bo: So Kelvin’s ultimate question is hey I notice you say okay student loans if I have some interest is high some interest is low, credit cards is always going to be high interest, auto loans some interest is high some interest is low, but mortgages were not on the list and we got this question a lot a number of years ago when mortgage rates were like 7%, 7.5%. People would ask hey is this now step three if I just bought a house should I be funneling all my funds there and we kind of said no. We do take this position and this stance that mortgages are likely, at least not in our current era, current stage, high interest debt. Why do we say that, Brian?

Brian: Because you can refinance. And that’s the thing is that there’s so many things you ought to be doing with your money in the beginning that it was more of an allocation of resources. And I think it’s still noble. I think that Austin was spot on though is that you do need to be very aware whatever community you look at. Is it better to rent versus own? Because there’s still a lot of people out there who have mortgages pre-2020 where their interest rates are sub-4%, their purchase price was a half to we’re getting to the point where 40% of what the market value of things are. So that’s why those people who own those houses from that period can have a rent well below where market is if you had to buy it and you’d be A-OK. Whereas I don’t force it, but I do think that if you’re in a house, it’s okay if that mortgage is 7% for a moment in time. My first house was 6%, 6.75% and I was able to refinance down and I still think that there’s going to be an opportunity for that in the future. I really do. I’m an optimist towards interest rates coming down.

Austin: I am too. And I think I just saw that slide for a second, but something I noticed was it was broken down by the specific thing that was financed. And I think there’s something to be had here about differentiating between a depreciating asset that’s financed and an appreciating asset that’s financed. Obviously, the mortgage isn’t mentioned here, but that’s an appreciating asset in most normal times. Car loans are the opposite. Student loans, I guess, are kind of in the middle because it’s your education, your career, things like that. Credit cards are never good to have. I always kind of thought about this, too. It’s like, what’s that perfect rule? There’s no perfect rule as it relates to what is high interest debt. But my framework in my mind is like, okay, where’s the federal funds rate right now, 3.5% to 4%. Maybe you add 4% on top of that, call it 7.5% to 8%. If it’s above that, let’s get it off. Let’s pay this off. Where if you’re sort of in that, you know, if you have student loans that are around the 5% or 6% range, you’re like, okay, well, maybe this is something we can talk through or prioritize. You mentioned resourcefulness there and using your different resources in a separate fashion. But yeah, I think if it’s above 7%, 8%, 9%, I don’t care what it is. Pay it off, man. You don’t need double digit interest rate debt.

Brian: But you do and look, I hate to put you on the spot, Austin, but if you have a 7.5% or 8%, let’s just say it’s 8% mortgage or you did a piggyback loan and you have your second mortgage is 8%, 8.5%. Would you pay that down before you funded your Roth IRA?

Austin: No.

Brian: No. Those are our rules. This is what we a lot of internal only on depreciable assets.

Bo: It’s an appreciable asset. You were saying it probably doesn’t apply, but appreciable it does. I do think one thing that’s really interesting that I’ve started paying a little bit of attention to and now we have to rewind almost 10 years before this was a thing, but we used to do these analyses for folks when they would go to buy their home. We would look at a 30-year mortgage versus a 15-year mortgage. And there was at that time there were some compelling circumstances where okay if I go get a 30-year mortgage at 6.5% but I do a 15-year mortgage at 5% or 4.5% then that might be a compelling trade-off if the rates are that much more attractive depending on where you are in your financial journey and what your age is. I do think if rates kind of persist where they are now we may begin to see more of a spread between 30 years and 15 years. What happened over the last decade is they converged so close that there just wasn’t a really compelling reason to look at 15-year mortgages. I think if we stay at this level, we’re going to start to see more spread there likely. So, it’s something to pay attention to. But again, I still love 30-year mortgages. They give you a lot of flexibility, especially if this is your first-time home purchase early on in your financial journey. Yeah. But if you are buying that second home, upgrading, trading up, I don’t think it’s crazy if the rate differential is there.

Brian: And don’t sleep on the fact, go through our checklist. Go to moneyguy.com/resources because you also need to make sure you go through the other elements. We’re talking about the component of interest rates and financing terms, but how long you’re going to stay in the house. There’s a lot of elements and we give you the checklist of all the things you need to be considering.

Austin: Yeah. I mean, we hear this phrase all the time, personal finance is personal, and you are the only person that can make those decisions for yourself. And it’s our jobs to give them the tools and resources and educate them, but at the end of the day, they’re the ones that have to make those decisions.

Live Q&A – Taking a Loan to Invest (38:05)

Rebie: Love it. All right. Next question is from Brandon H. It says, “Hi team. Should I take out a $25K loan at 2.99% interest rate for investing in a long-term brokerage account? I’m 29, on step seven or eight of the FOO, $95K salary, trying to build a house in two to three years. Is this a good idea?” I can see their faces.

Austin: Where are you getting a $25,000 loan at 3%. First off, that’s interesting.

Brian: Here’s the thing. I would also he left off, how long is it locked in at that 2.99%? And then I’m always a little leery, especially when I find out somebody is making close to $100,000. I think there is more benefit and dividends to figuring out how you get your savings rate to 20%, 25% as fast as possible so you can make it automatic for the people. Always be buying. I don’t like gimmicks like this because usually this is the same thing as on our previous question where it was talking about credit cards because financial mutants, we all think we’re so smart. We say, “But the credit card company’s offering me 0% on my credit cards right now.” And I’m like, “Yeah, because” and I said it earlier, I’ll say it again. The dope man gives you that first hit for free because they’re trying to get you hooked and then they’re hoping that you fall off into the ditch and you have an addiction and you’re doing it all wrong. It’s the same way with debt. And I always worry these introductory offers. It’s the same way. You go fill your house full of furniture and they won’t even make you pay interest for five years according to the commercials. But then if you go read the fine print, you find out if you have any hiccup. They’re waiting there like the grim reaper to just take you down. So I would rather you focus on the positive behavior that doesn’t require debt than trying to count on some introductory offer and leveraging up right off the get-go. I always like leverage when I get into residential rental property and things like that. That’s more of a step eight of the Financial Order of Operations than somebody who’s 29 years old trying to leverage to get an arbitrage built.

Austin: And I think to add on top of that, Brandon, something and again, maybe you are insanely disciplined and this is not going to take place in your situation, but if I was a betting man, I would bet if you were to go borrow this $25,000 at a 3% interest rate, you might get a little weird about how this money is invested. You’re going to see it go up and down. Oh my gosh, wait, so how much what’s my payment? It’s down a little bit, so I’m losing money. Should I pay it back? Do I sell it early? I think that you’re going to get really emotional even if you did this. So in my opinion, don’t do this, dude. Literally go find to your point Brian that 20% to 25% in your budget. Go invest that. Go do everything you’re supposed to do and do not wealth is not built at this early stage on debt. It’s built on discipline.

Bo: My question is why? Here’s some things I know about you Brandon. You make $95,000 a year, you’re 29 years old and you’ve already said that you’re in step seven or eight, which tells me you’re saving 25% for your future. Why lever that up? Why take on more risk than absolutely necessary? I was trying to think of an analogy and I came up with a dumb one that doesn’t work real well, but I’m going to say it because I can. If I don’t put my seatbelt on when I get in my car, technically I can get to my destination faster. I don’t have to worry about buckling. I don’t have to put taking it off. But is the marginal increase in speed at which I will arrive at my destination by not doing that worth the risk that I’m going to take on? Absolutely not. We’re talking about small sums. If you are already saving and already doing the thing that you want to do, you’re basically you’re not exactly rounding third almost home, but man, you are far along in the base path at this point. Why do you want to start showboating and adding risk unnecessarily that could likely more than likely derail your plan unnecessarily?

Brian: So, what I love about doing a live show is that Brandon’s out in the audience and gave us more context. This is a loan for military officers. So, thank you for your service. Exactly. Thank you. I still I don’t think it’s necessary. You know, this is one of those things where it intrigues you, the financial mutant inside of you, but this isn’t where your wealth is necessarily. This isn’t the foundation block for it. It’s really it’s exactly what Austin said. It’s the discipline of setting up those automatic for the people type behaviors that is going to take you to the next level. Because that’s the other thing as a military officer. I don’t know what you have going on. You didn’t say you had kids. I don’t think you have kids. They weren’t trying to do other things. So you probably already have your own arbitrage situation is that your housing is subsidized and other things. I bet you can get to 20%, 25%. He said he’s in step seven and eight. He said he’s already there. So that’s why I think this is something that you look back and go just because you can doesn’t mean you should on there. There’s a lot of things for financial mutants that you learn is it reminds me of the siren song. Go do this because it’s not really going to make your life any better.

It Doesn’t Depend – Rapid Fire Segment (43:27)

Rebie: No, it’s great. Thank you for all the questions. We love hearing what’s on your mind. So keep them coming. And right now we are going to keep them coming but even faster. It is time for our It Does Not Depend rapid fire segment. So the rules of this segment are all three of you combined have 60 seconds to answer the question and you cannot use the words it depends. So that’s one of the rules because they struggle with that. They like to say it depends.

Brian: So personal finance ain’t personal on this one. Okay here we go. It’s absolute.

Rebie: Their consolation prize is that at the end of the rapid fire, we will have our maybe it does depend segment where you can air any grievances or add to what you didn’t get to say during rapid fire if you so please.

Austin: I’m so excited.

Brian: Do we have a non do we have the Eye of the Tiger? Never mind. Keep going. Just visualize. That probably doesn’t we don’t get sued for that. Now we’re ready. Let’s do this.

Rebie: Sing as much as you want. Okay, for the record.

Brian: Look, you don’t want to mess I learned at an early age. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, you don’t use music on your podcast. They get you.

Rebie: All right, here we go. First rapid fire question. Why can’t Roth funds be used as an emergency fund?

Bo: Because they’re for retirement.

Brian: Technically, they can, but you shouldn’t.

Austin: Because you already have an emergency fund. The point of the emergency fund is to ensure that you are one, not swiping a credit card, and two, not cashing out money that’s already invested for you in your retirement accounts, right? So, no, you already have an emergency fund. You’re good. You don’t need to go cash out your Roth IRA principal. Yeah, you can pull it out without penalties. I get that. But at the end of the day, you already have an emergency fund for this.

Brian: I feel like we did this like the Dapper Dance. I mean, because we didn’t take our times. It’s just like one of us played the bass, one of us was the alto, and we’re like, “This is how we did it.” That’s a cappella group down at Disney. If you go if you’re on Main Street in Magic Kingdom, you’ll see the Dapper Dance.

Austin: You ever done the Drink Around the World at Epcot? I just did that last year. It was a lot of fun.

Bo: I have not done drink around the world all at once.

Brian: I’m not all at once, but I’ve been in Epcot enough that I see the people wearing the shirt that are on display are letting us know, hey, be careful of us because we’re drinking around the world.

Austin: Love it. For the record, I was not wearing one of those shirts.

Brian: You should have. If I was going to do it, I need a shirt.

Rebie: Good to know.

Brian: But I have not rapid. No. Here’s the thing. If I did it though, we would all we would do half drinks. You share drinks. Everybody pairs up to a buddy.

Austin: Yeah. No, that’s what my fiancée and I did.

Brian: Look at that. See, that’s the responsible. That’s how you get through it. If you don’t do it that way, love it. That way you can cap it off with Guardians of the Galaxy at the end of the night.

Rebie: All right. Want to get back to some rapid fire. Next one is with an eight-year age gap, 26 and 34, what ages do you use for planning for retirement?

Brian: The easy answer is the oldest person’s.

Austin: Oh, I understand the question now. No, that makes a lot of sense.

Brian: Yeah. Because that’s going to be the most conservative answer because it makes time happen faster. So, that’s going to be the easy answer is base it off the old person.

Bo: And they’re specifically asking what number to use for retirement, not how to calculate any of the formulas like where they are, average accumulator, any of that kind of stuff.

Brian: We can come back to the it depends section and I have a lot more feedback, but I can give you the oldest person if you need an on the cuff answer. It’s not abundantly clear.

Bo: Read me the question one more time.

Rebie: Bo, they were asking. With an 8-year age gap, 26 and 34, what ages do you use for planning for retirement? So I think it kind of encompasses a lot.

Brian: It’s really more of the person’s age than what’s the date of the actual retirement.

Bo: That’s right. Hey, we want to retire in 30 years.

Rebie: Great. Look at that. 60 seconds is too long. You guys better watch. We’re going to spin up a lot of challenges on this in the future. Next question says, “What age or amount of money should you have before consulting a financial advisor? Follow-up. How do you find a good financial advisor?”

Austin: I’m not going to step on any toes.

Brian: Greater than $500,000 and you go to moneyguy.com and go to work with us. Yep.

Bo: I love all those things. Only thing I’ll add to that slightly is it depends on what kind of services.

Austin: Here are my quick thoughts. I think a lot of people make the mistake of thinking they need $10,000, $50,000, $100,000 to get started with investing. You don’t. You can start with $10. You can start with maxing out your Roth IRA, contributing to your employer’s 401k, right? Things of that nature. But I think when it comes to a financial advisor, in my humble opinion, the biggest beyond just them helping you with strategy help they can provide is the emotional sort of support that comes with investing in the stock market, which goes up, down, left, right, and in circles over a long period of time. They’re going to keep you in the markets for longer.

Brian: Look, I’ve tried to keep this as simple as possible. While your life is simple, come to us. When your life gets complicated, it will with success. Then you know you’ve graduated.

Rebie: I gave you three extra seconds. You’re welcome.

Brian: I know. We’ll come back.

Bo: I have failed every time we’ve done rapid fire. Every single time we’ve done it, I have screwed it up.

Brian: You know how good we would be if we did that shock collar thing. It would have been so good. And we maybe even give me the button.

Bo: Do not give him the shock button.

Rebie: But no, if we do that, I get the button.

Austin: Every time you get a new subscriber, it just kind of gives you a little

Rebie: All right, let’s do a few more rapid fire before we have our discussion time at the end. Currently in step five of FOO. When trying to build wealth with a spouse, is there a way to combine accounts to optimize compound interest? What’s the ideal for a couple to do?

Bo: Compound interest will stay the same whether your accounts are together or not together. That’s where the mathematics work. If you have two $100,000 accounts or one $200,000 account, the math is the same. Now, what’s the optimal strategy?

Brian: You definitely use the Financial Order of Operations because one spouse might have a kicking 401k that allows you to maximize step six in a really good way. So you load that up. Both of you probably want to have Roth IRAs, but you have to make sure you have the right account structure. That’s why the Financial Order of Operations is the all-terrain vehicle to get you there 100%.

Austin: Yeah, I think just as someone who’s getting married in May of 2027, I can’t wait to come. Thank you so much. I can’t wait to combine my finances with my spouse and it’s going to be awesome.

Bo: That is how people build wealth.

Brian: Can I ask Austin a question? This is just this is a trend. He has 60 seconds to answer. This is a trend. I’ve noticed all my friends who are getting married now, when I dropped the ring when I did the ring with my wife, it set a clock for six months. But I know all marriages now are over a year and now I’ve heard this weekend from a dear friend the venues are booked even for over a year now. So is that what’s going on? Why I’m just curious why trends are is that I’m just an old school guy.

Austin: No, I and it’s funny. I don’t mean to get weird, but yeah, so I got engaged June 4, 2025. My dad died July of 2025. And so it was pause on all wedding planning. And then in October of 2025, it was let’s go now think about the wedding. And the only types of venues that were available were ones we just really didn’t want or they were available on 9/11 of this year, which is a Saturday, or Halloween. I didn’t want to get married on either of those days. Too hard. So then I flipped it forward to spring of ’27. May 8th is when we’re going to get married. And it was like the last day at this venue. It was that or it was June 20th. Like there are some of these venues are really in high demand.

Bo: You were only engaged for 6 months. I was a year. We were almost a year to the day. How long were you engaged for?

Rebie: Oh, I was short. We were like four or five months. I’m weird. I thought one year was the standard. In my circles anyway. I don’t know.

Brian: Thank you all for going on the sidebar.

Rebie: I know. Not financial. Just talking. I guess it is. Weddings are financial.

Brian: We could go. Weddings are very financial, aren’t they? The situation is very financial. A whole industry that makes money off of those emotions. Yes. Oh goodness.

Rebie: No. When you’re only engaged for four or five months, the venue list is very limited, which I didn’t totally mind to be honest. I was just like whatever is available.

Brian: I’m from South Atlanta. Let me tell you, those venues, they make it happen. Plenty of venues. Not as much demand.

Rebie: Let’s do a few more rapid fires before we close this out. It says, “I’m at FOO step five completed, working towards step six, but the car payment is $935 at 4.74% APR and I didn’t use the 20/3/8 rule to buy. Should I start paying this thing off or consider it low interest at age 31?”

Austin: I would really want to know how much you still owe on this car. Obviously FOO, go check that out. Make sure you follow everything they share with FOO. I think it’s an incredible roadmap. But at the end of the day, if you’re going to have a ton of money you owe, I think on this car, and you already have that sitting in cash in maybe a bridge account, a taxable brokerage account, something of that nature, and you can say, “Hey, I’m going to go free up $1,000 a month by paying this off a little bit early.” I’m all here for that.

Bo: I would do the math to recalculate what would it take to get this inside of 20/3/8. So based on the interest rate, I think you said 4.75% based on $935 a month payment if based on when I bought it. If I wanted to get it inside of the 20/3/8 structure, what would the mathematics for that look like?

Brian: I was going to say get it back within 20/3/8, go back and do the exercise. But what I loved there was Bo’s micro machines voice. I mean, he I listen, did you hear how he sped it up? I was like, man, oh man, if you’re running that at double speed, it’s cooking. The chipmunks.

Rebie: All right, let’s do one more. This is a fun one. Favorite finance books in addition to Millionaire Mission, because that is our favorite.

Brian: There we go. Let’s go.

Austin: Sure. I will say 100 Baggers by Christopher Mayer is a great book. I really like The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John C. Bogle. And I also enjoy Millionaire Next Door.

Bo: You go.

Brian: Well, I mean, everybody knows mine because I always say the two books that shaped me initially were Wealthy Barber and The Millionaire Next Door. And that’s why I love what I did with Millionaire Mission is because I felt like I kind of paid respect to both of those powerful books because I gave you a narrative like Wealthy Barber, but I definitely walked you through my life story and how I came across the Financial Order of Operations. But then I put in the analytics of the Millionaire Next Door.

Bo: Yeah. Millionaire Mission, How to Win Friends and Influence People. I’m trying to say that’s a good one too. Even though it doesn’t seem like it’s a financial book, it absolutely will impact your financial life if you take what that book says to heart.

Brian: Great. Look at that. I didn’t think I left you much time. I only left him like 16 seconds. So, well done.

Maybe It Does Depend Follow-Up (56:18)

Rebie: All right. We have now come to the end of our It Does Not Depend rapid fire segment. So, let’s go back. I took notes now. I almost said it depends a couple times, Bo. So, what do you want to set the record straight up?

Bo: Well, let’s go in order. First, anything to add to the age to retire? There’s a 26-year-old, 34-year-old. How do I decide on retirement? Austin, you said you had some stuff you want to add.

Austin: I did. I just wanted to add real quick. I appreciate them doing this breakdown of trying to figure out whose sort of path and all that fun stuff, but I also think a fun exercise would be trying to figure out, we all know what the 4% rule is. I think a fun exercise would be trying to figure out your freedom number and how quickly you can achieve that, right? So maybe there’s a world where you can retire at 48 or 52 or 56 before you tap into these retirement accounts. And so just taking the time there to say okay how much wealth can we build in a 10, 15, 20, 25 year period of time here, what does the 4% rule look like, do we have it in the right accounts where we can touch this penalty-free. I think thinking about it holistically, not just having an age here, age here and who should we kind of think about is a great way to approach it and also if you guys are married it’s like everyone’s money so it’s not like oh this person has money in this account I mean it’s think about it as a whole.

Brian: When I’m doing financial planning, one of my favorite things that I like that we do for clients is that you’ll see a key dates page, especially doing retirement planning. And we’ll have for both spouses will have dates of access, but we also have the dates that they each plan on retiring. And you can kind of start very quickly seeing where the intersection points are with Social Security, with 59.5, 55 if they’re part of a 401k. That’s what I love about doing a plan is because you kind of start seeing all the movable pieces and you make a dream into an actual actionable plan.

Bo: Love that. I’ve got nothing to add to those. So, those are great. The next question though was, and I got some thoughts on this.

Rebie: I know you do.

Bo: When should I hire a financial advisor and how do I find one? I was like, this is my question. What I was going to say is it depends on what you’re looking for because not all financial advisors are created equal and not all services they provide are the same. Are you looking for something that’s a one-time transactional thing? Are you looking for just investment management? Are you looking for a more total view of your financial life to make sure all the pieces fit together? Because at different pieces, parts and stages of your financial journey, you might be looking for one of those things. So, first you need to define what am I looking for? And then you can decide, okay, well, based on what I’m looking for, I’m at the stage where that makes sense. I love what Brian said. If you’re someone who’s looking for a holistic look at your entire financial picture, understand all the parts and pieces of your life fit together. We usually see that start to make sense once someone has $500,000, $600,000 of investable assets and some complexity in their life where they’re like, man, I just don’t know the things that I don’t know. Now, there are other people earlier on in the journey, and in our opinion is there’s tons of free resources and blogs and podcasts and all kinds of things out there that are amazing resources you can do it yourself. But some people want something slightly more than do it yourself. And there are solutions out there available that bridge that gap between, okay, I’m going to do it myself and okay, I’m ready for the full holistic view of my life. And so, you have to figure out where you are and what you’re looking for. In terms of how to find that, we have a great resource on the website. If you go to moneyguy.com/resources, it’s eight questions to ask your financial advisor. No matter what type of advisor you’re thinking about, you should ask them these questions. Hey, how do you get paid? What are your conflicts of interest? How do I know you know what you’re talking about? Because you want to make sure once you’ve defined what it is you’re looking for that the person on the other side of the table is set up to deliver that thing that you’re looking for. So, it’s a free resource. Go out there, check that out, and use that as sort of an interview guide as you’re having these conversations.

Austin: I absolutely love that because to your point, unfortunately, there are financial advisors out there that are predatory if it’s with their fees or maybe they’re not fiduciaries. A lot, they get paid on the back end by different types of funds that they recommend, right? There’s a lot of little things that people don’t understand as it relates to how some of these financial advisors get compensated and then why they’re wanting to put you in specific products. But I could not agree more and I think it’s really interesting. I want to get y’all’s perspective on this as you know you’re seeing companies that are offering you mentioned the transactional stuff right for $250 an hour a fiduciary will sit down with you and sort of go through the motions or I think there’s companies out there that will give us $3,000 we’ll give you a whole financial picture. So is this a new trend you guys are seeing because you guys have been in the space a lot longer than I have.

Brian: Look, there’s been disruptors and this is kind of the same thing with what’s going on with AI right now, too. Everybody, you know, first it was the hourly advisors are going to replace you and then it was the robo advisors are going to replace you. Now everybody talks about AI. At the end of the day, for me it comes down to the execution of the planning because it’s easy to create a somewhat coherent plan. It’s another thing to actually turn a plan into the execution of something that creates meaningful change in people’s life. And I was having a conversation with another advisor yesterday. Rebie was on that call with me too and we were talking about he was like, “Yeah, it’s the same thing.” That’s because we were kind of talking about trends that are going on. He’s like, “I had a wire transfer that it was 10 calls to make sure this wasn’t a crooked transaction.” And I think about how we have to massage the paperwork for so many of our clients on how you do key transactions when you’re consolidating health savings accounts and when you’re doing Roth conversions, when you’re actually reviewing the tax returns for clients before they hit file because you the advisor might know more about the investment transactions or the interaction of all the investment income with IRMAA or Social Security than even the tax preparer does. So all those things kind of come into play. So it’s back to the execution. Now, maybe we get to the point but I get excited. I’m just a natural optimist that I think even if this thing can do execution down the road. I think that just means that now we can service more people because right now my restrictions as a financial advisor that’s why everybody picks on especially us who choose the relationship side of things through AUM. I really do adhere to the Dunbar principle that humans just can only handle so many relationships well and I can only work with so many people and my time we have more people that want to work with us than we can actually do. So we have to put governors on how we structure that. So I get excited from the technology standpoint if something allowed us to actually reach more people. Yeah, maybe that compresses the cost to some degree, which even opens it up from a cost, if it’s supply and demand. If the pricing, the flexibility of all that, the malleability of all that stuff. I get excited that we’re not even seeing what could be. We’re all thinking about the destruction when I see that there potentially could be access to more people because my goal always has been with this show is to be an educator and see if we can get more people making better decisions. So I get excited that’s why we can just give it away. I remember I’ve been doing this so long that when I first started going to conferences it’s probably 2009, 2010 and I’d go at these conferences and other financial advisors like aren’t you just giving it away aren’t you scared that that’s hurting you for radical transparency.

Austin: Yeah.

Brian: And I was like no. I was like because I just I think that the education is so powerful. We can and I know that the complexity is going to be there in what we’re sharing. So I have never been burned by being super generous and having this optimist mindset and I think we’ll be okay. And plus the sense of community. You guys know you come here every Tuesday because you know that financial mutants are different. And we’re leaning into how we can expand that community element even more because we want you guys to be able to connect. We want you to be able to connect with us. And that’s something that no machine is ever going to be able to replace is how do we all get together and feel that human element that makes it so special.

Closing – Join Us Next Week (1:04:42)

Bo: Love that.

Rebie: Love it. No, I do. This has been really awesome. Thank you so much for joining us every Tuesday at 10 a.m. Central. We’ll be back next Tuesday. And until then, make sure you check out moneyguy.com because we have tons of free resources, calculators, and articles all going deeper on things that we discussed today and more. So, moneyguy.com. Austin, thanks for being with us today. Let them know if anybody wants to know about your stuff, where can they find you?

Austin: Every Monday, Thursday, and Friday, we’re publishing new episodes of the Rich Habits podcast on Spotify, on YouTube, on Apple. Go check out the Rich Habits Network, a place for our biggest fans to have extra coursework, participate in weekly live streams that my co-hosts and I have. Go check out gritcap.io, which is the URL of my newsletter called Rate of Return, and just check out Austin Hankwitz on the internet.

Bo: Love that.

Brian: Guys, we had a blast. I think you could see the passion.

Austin: So fun. Yeah, this is great. Can’t wait to do it again.

Brian: This is a lot of fun. I’m your host, Brian, joined by Bo and Austin, Rebie, and the rest of the content team. Money Guy out.